Blizzard: Conan stole our WoW players

[Tarami]

I find these graphics vs. performance arguments inherently moot.  I applaud all designers that push the graphics envelope because quite frankly without designers doing this it'd stagnate the hardware market as well as slow-down the speed of software progress (one reason why software lags behind hardware increasingly more every year).  Yes, you'll have games that approach genius-level and find that happy-medium between art direction, graphics, and performance... but that level wouldnt be reached w/o apps like Crysis, AoC, FSX, etc.  Not to mention hardware prices would drop more slowly w/o apps that could use them.

I remember having these arguments back when I had a Tandy 1000 and a 2400 baud modem.  It never stops.  I couldnt play the latest version of King's/Space Quest because it wasnt perdy enough, if playable at all.  Enter DX2... and on and on.  I didnt appreciate Space Quest less just because it wouldnt play on my frakkin Tandy box properly!

WoW is successful because it caters to the masses of mediocrity that pervade the gaming public in the US.  It's a smart financial move.  It's not groundbreaking 'cept to show everyone where the "sweet spot" lies.  It serves to "bring balance to the force" so to speak.  Yes, indeed we can look at WoW like we look at Anakin Skywalker... popular, powerful, and shiny but evil incarnate, setting back the galaxy 1000's of years and enslaving billions - turning back to the Good only when he dies, so the Galaxy can move forward.  (okay a bit extreme)

Scandinavian game designers rarely if ever make games for the masses.  It's NOT their style and I applaud them for it.  AoC is no exception.  They design games to push envelopes, not to necessarily make the most dollar initially.  Sure, they can get a bit off-the-wall sometimes but at least they're daring to be different.  And in the end a new Chosen One will emerge and a bigger, better "Sweet Spot" will be found and all will be right with the world.  More people will have DX10 rigs, 21" monitors, raid managers, geek vernacular, etc.  and we'll all look upon this "Space Quest" period and laugh as we simultaneously decapitate our bosses playing an Augmented Reality version of Bushido Blade in the office on a wearable Voodoo rig.

Games like WoW may bring these people to the table, but you're not going to sell them a better Vacuum without having something shiny to show them... regardless of art direction.

You are excluding the fact that arts mature, even without technological progress. Late titles for a specific console look better in general than early ones. This also goes for PC. More often than not has the former generation of technology yet to be mastered when the next step is taken. "Pushing the envelope" is more about not really knowing what you're doing than really progressing, rather the actual progress will happen in other, later, games that copy the parts that turned out well. While it's laudable to "take the hit", you're not the one that will come out with that really inspiring game.

In fact, I'm fairly sure that a 4 to 5-year period between every significant hardware change is healthy for the quality of the games, rather than constantly treading unknown soil as the PC is doing. When was the last time you played a truly enjoyable "bleeding edge" game on PC?

[Slyfeind]

Games like WoW may bring these people to the table, but you're not going to sell them a better Vacuum without having something shiny to show them... regardless of art direction.

We're seeing evidence that this isn't a good analogy. People should be buying the PS3, but they're not. They're buying the Wii. TR is more modern than WOW. Why didn't it drive them out of business?

I have a feeling you're just playing devil's advocate here, because even the big publishers are thinking fun over high-end requirements now.

In fact, I'm fairly sure that a 4 to 5-year period between every significant hardware change is healthy for the quality of the games, rather than constantly treading unknown soil as the PC is doing. When was the last time you played a truly enjoyable "bleeding edge" game on PC?

I hope that wasn't a rhetorical question, cause I wanna say 14 years ago with Wing Commander 3. :)

[Ghambit]

Games like WoW may bring these people to the table, but you're not going to sell them a better Vacuum without having something shiny to show them... regardless of art direction.

We're seeing evidence that this isn't a good analogy. People should be buying the PS3, but they're not. They're buying the Wii. TR is more modern than WOW. Why didn't it drive them out of business?

I have a feeling you're just playing devil's advocate here, because even the big publishers are thinking fun over high-end requirements now.

I am somewhat playing devil's advocate here.  But remember, without consoles like the PS3 there's a good chance people wouldn't have bought the Wii.  Feel me?  Look at it like the Cold War.  Without escalation there can be no moderate progress.  And as the Wii brings in consolers, so do those consolers eventually buy 360/PS3.

TR has some aspects that'll most likely make it into future titles.  And the fact is, it was FUBARED due to rushed release and a semi-psychotic producer.  Implementation killed that cat, not modern stylization.  The same can be said for AoC; which indeed could've been the "better vacuum."  But so far it aint... not becuase of hardware requirements, but because of faulty implementation.

Fun is indeed the most important, but if you dont push the envelope you end up gimping your own capabilities in the future... which slows down everything even moreso, giving us folk at f13 yet even more fodder to bytch about.  A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here aint gonna come about because someone simply decides to make something "FUN."  They come about because increasingly modern groundwork and tools are laid out for the devs and artists to take advantage of.

Is this an excuse to make steaming piles of shyt?  No.  But it doesnt mean we should all still be using our Ataris to make Pixar films either.

[Ingmar]

And it isn't just the Wii, either. I'm not seeing any strong reason to dump a bunch of money into a PS3 when I have a 360 and a PC and a Wii. There's very little it offers me I can't get from one of the other 3, all of which have a big head start over the PS3 in terms of how many people own one.

[Fordel]

I am somewhat playing devil's advocate here.  But remember, without consoles like the PS3 there's a good chance people wouldn't have bought the Wii.  Feel me?

No? I don't understand the logic being used here.

[Aez]

I am somewhat playing devil's advocate here.  But remember, without consoles like the PS3 there's a good chance people wouldn't have bought the Wii.  Feel me?

No? I don't understand the logic being used here.

He wants you to feel him.

[Slyfeind]

A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here aint gonna come about because someone simply decides to make something "FUN."  They come about because increasingly modern groundwork and tools are laid out for the devs and artists to take advantage of.

A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here don't require high-end systems. I don't see people wishing for more polygons around here.

[Tarami]

Fun is indeed the most important, but if you dont push the envelope you end up gimping your own capabilities in the future... which slows down everything even moreso, giving us folk at f13 yet even more fodder to bytch about.  A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here aint gonna come about because someone simply decides to make something "FUN."  They come about because increasingly modern groundwork and tools are laid out for the devs and artists to take advantage of.

Actually, if Conan had been half as technically pretty and half as incomplete, f13 would have flamed it half as much. ;-)

[Ghambit]

A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here aint gonna come about because someone simply decides to make something "FUN."  They come about because increasingly modern groundwork and tools are laid out for the devs and artists to take advantage of.

A lot of the design concepts we constantly wish for here don't require high-end systems. I don't see people wishing for more polygons around here.

Real-time rendering?  Immense player content?  Seamless worlds?  Integrated player-created instances?  True Sandboxes?  Photorealism?
It's not always about the polys either, it can just be about raw calculation.

[tmp]

Real-time rendering?  Immense player content?  Seamless worlds?  Integrated player-created instances?  True Sandboxes?  Photorealism?
It's not always about the polys either, it can just be about raw calculation.

immense player content, seamless worlds, player-created instances, true sandboxes ... these been done sometimes as far as few years back and on hardware considerably weaker than most recent machines. Real time rendering? technically all games render in real time, so i'll guess you mean something else here. Photorealism? Really, that's what we "constantly wish for here?"

[Ghambit]

Real-time rendering?  Immense player content?  Seamless worlds?  Integrated player-created instances?  True Sandboxes?  Photorealism?
It's not always about the polys either, it can just be about raw calculation.

immense player content, seamless worlds, player-created instances, true sandboxes ... these been done sometimes as far as few years back and on hardware considerably weaker than most recent machines. Real time rendering? technically all games render in real time, so i'll guess you mean something else here. Photorealism? Really, that's what we "constantly wish for here?"

Games do not render in real-time.  They just put pre-rendered pieces together in pre-defined ways.  Go chunk out some fractal terrain on Terragen and Mojoworld and ask your system to render it and see what happens.  Go ask Pixar how long it takes them to render a scene.  Anyways.

Perfect player content requires robust easy-to-use tools that likely uses all-of-the above techniques also.  Making entire gameworlds this way likewise.  Spore will come close, but it's not an MMO (for many reasons, technology being one of them).

Most large seamless gameworlds suck ass.  Ever played WW2O?  Decent game, but crippled by an antiquated engine played on old hardware most of the time.  You LIKE having to instance every 3 feet you travel in modern games?  Moving on.

As for Photorealism, that's a battle I've seen a few times here on f13.  Yeah, some people dont like it... but, many do.  It's largely more of an artistic outlook than a graphical one.  But you can also look at it as simply fitting more pixels and polys in all your graphics.  The goal is achieving resolutions similar to film, no matter what the medium or subject (real or unreal).  The more information you can store in an image the better.

[Ingmar]

I don't know why people keep trumpeting a 'true sandbox' as something that would have mass market appeal. The average gamer needs/wants structure. Even Spore has structure.

[Ghambit]

I don't know why people keep trumpeting a 'true sandbox' as something that would have mass market appeal. The average gamer needs/wants structure. Even Spore has structure.

All Sandboxes have wooden borders to keep the sand in.  Otherwise it uhh.. wouldnt be a box. 
No one's saying it doesnt need structure. 
And Spore will be a prime example of why sandboxes DO have mass market appeal (when implemented properly).  I guess you're now arguing between a mere sandbox and a true one?  Define the differences.

[schild]

Spore won't prove anything. It doesn't become a true sandbox until the end of the game and I wager while it'll sell hojillion copies, most folks won't make it that far. But the vocal minority (which will be 500k-1M in this game) will make it seem like they did. Simply put, it's a shockingly hardcore game from the guy that brought us The Sims. It's been too long since SimCity to call Will Wright a designer for hardcore folks.

[Mrbloodworth]

Games do not render in real-time.  They just put pre-rendered pieces together in pre-defined ways.

Woh, what? Perhaps that just needs rewording.

Also, WWIIO's main Drain on engine resources is the insane amount of calculations they do for combat/physics, its not that the engine isn't capable of better overall graphics (Not talking art here), its a give and take.'

NVM..there just a lot in that post thats off base.

[Ghambit]

Rewording:  Rendering photorealistic movie-quality images in realtime within a structured gaming Sandbox.

[tmp]

Games do not render in real-time.  They just put pre-rendered pieces together in pre-defined ways.  Go chunk out some fractal terrain on Terragen and Mojoworld and ask your system to render it and see what happens.  Go ask Pixar how long it takes them to render a scene.  Anyways.

... i'm sorry but this is silly. Games do render, in real time, the content that's made simple enough to allow such operation. The "putting pre-rendered pieces together in pre-defined ways"? This applies just as much to the terrain in Terragen, or to Pixar animation -- these are, after all, pre-defined by animators shot by shot.

If you actually meant to say "real time rendering of renderman quality" then well, that's another thing altogether and the source of my initial confusion.

Perfect player content requires robust easy-to-use tools that likely uses all-of-the above techniques also.  Making entire gameworlds this way likewise.

No one said anything about "perfect" player content, your original demand was "immense". Shitload of player content is already out there, let's not move these goal posts.

Most large seamless gameworlds suck ass.

So? Maybe large seamless gameworlds in practice just aren't as hot thing to have in game as you think... was it really so exciting to have seamless galaxy in Frontier? And that's about as big and as seamless as things can get.

As for Photorealism, that's a battle I've seen a few times here on f13.  Yeah, some people dont like it... but, many do.  It's largely more of an artistic outlook than a graphical one.  But you can also look at it as simply fitting more pixels and polys in all your graphics.  The goal is achieving resolutions similar to film, no matter what the medium or subject (real or unreal).  The more information you can store in an image the better.

The more information you can store in the image, the higher demand for quality and detail of all featured content, and consequently the longer time (and budget) required to push the game out of the door. Considering it i'm really not very keen on the push for the photorealism nor i'm sure if it's really "the better" -- as it moves games in the direction of summer blockbusters, extending development cycles and limiting risks publishers are willing to take... and half the time end effect looks just like ass anyway because our minds nitpick details more, the more things attempt to look real.

(additionally, with the output resolutions pretty much capped at 1920 x 1080 at the moment i'm not sure what's the benefit of asking for 'film resolutions' which are roughly 1.5-2x that)

[Count Nerfedalot]

Also, WWIIO's main Drain on engine resources is the insane amount of calculations they do for combat/physics, its not that the engine isn't capable of better overall graphics (Not talking art here), its a give and take.'

NVM..there just a lot in that post thats off base.

Hopefully the server is doing the combat/physics calculations while the clients do their own graphics rendering?

[tmp]

And Spore will be a prime example of why sandboxes DO have mass market appeal (when implemented properly).

This appears to be different argument altogether. To remind, the initial point was "we need powerful computers to do things like.... true sandbox!" with the counter-point to it, "true sandbox" games been done already, with hardware quite weaker than modern machines. Which would imply that no, we don't actually need more powerful computers to pull it off, nor is the lack of such computers preventing appearance of more of such games.

[Mrbloodworth]

Also, WWIIO's main Drain on engine resources is the insane amount of calculations they do for combat/physics, its not that the engine isn't capable of better overall graphics (Not talking art here), its a give and take.'

NVM..there just a lot in that post thats off base.

Hopefully the server is doing the combat/physics calculations while the clients do their own graphics rendering?

It is, but it does affect rendering and frame rates. All servers do. I had a thread with a video posted of what it is they do. Wasent even going to bring up world size, number of players, aircraft ETC..

Bottom line, its all give and take.

[Slyfeind]

I'd say most gamers don't want photorealism anymore. They got it a few times, and said "Oh that's what it's like, ok I changed my mind, I don't like it." Everybody here seems to hate it. Most gamers elsewhere like the idea of it until they see it, then beg for their silly goofy IMVU avatars again.

Sandboxy games taking low computing power...yes. Dwarf Fortress, M.U.L.E., Ultimas 6 and Ultima 7, Rogue...of course it depends on what we want to do in our sandbox, but generally if we're talking about more fun options, that's a function of man power and not computing power. Same with player content. That's a question of the right players putting in the hours, or of clever game systems that bring that stuff out of us. A Tale in the Desert does this beautifully, without need of beautiful graphics.

[Abelian75]

Uh, yeah, like others have said, games do render in real-time.  I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

And if a server is doing a calculation, that doesn't affect client frame rates at all, unless you have an extraordinarily weird architecture.

[Tarami]

Rewording:  Rendering photorealistic movie-quality images in realtime within a structured gaming Sandbox.

Whattaya mean, movie-quality? Tin Boy quality? We're already doing that in real time. Even then, we can still not create animation that's so convincing that Average Joe won't be able to tell it from the real thing. "Movie-quality" is only good enough to render things that are out of our focus (mattes, partial overlays et.c.) - anything that is IN focus still looks plastic and unreal.

And "true sandboxes"... this has nothing to do with computing power. It has everything to do with human capability to envision what a "true sandbox" would mean. We like to think we're gods, but we're not. A real sandbox is most likely outside the scope of our intellect. When does it become too real? What things aren't desirable in a fictional world? Even with unlimited computing power, would we get games that are more fun? Mind you, Go, the boardgame, is ancient, has very simple rules and is still enjoyed by millions. Tell them we need better graphics and faster CPUs.

For scientific reasons? Sure. For making games that are more fun? Nu-uh.

[Lakov_Sanite]

He wants a holo-deck and won't be satisfied till he can bone marylin monroe while riding a dinosaur

[Sparky]

I'd definitely buy a lifetime account for that

[Mrbloodworth]

Uh, yeah, like others have said, games do render in real-time.  I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

And if a server is doing a calculation, that doesn't affect client frame rates at all, unless you have an extraordinarily weird architecture.

Or a heavy use of dynamic content. Yeah, servers do, and can impact clients frame rates in a number of ways. Depends on the design.

[Abelian75]

If it's just on the server, then no, it won't affect frame rates.  Now, the example above regarding physics sims probably will affect the client, but not because of server calculations, but because A) most likely the client will ALSO be doing a physics sim, and B) if you have a physics sim, you may well have more objects for the client to render.

But the server could decide to do an incredibly realistic combat damage system and it wouldn't affect the client one bit.  The server getting bogged down will not cause client frame rate issues at all, though yes, often they will both get bogged down at the same time by similar things (such as one hundred people being in the same place), but independently and probably because of different calculations.

I don't really know what you mean by a heavy use of dynamic content.  If you're talking about some complex formula for determining when and where things spawn, then no, that wouldn't affect the client at all.  If you just mean that there would be more stuff in the world, then obviously that will affect the client because it has more things to render, but this is totally independent from whether or not the server is struggling.

[Ghambit]

He wants a holo-deck and won't be satisfied till he can bone marylin monroe while riding a dinosaur

precisely... and there's no sarcasm here... just precisely
And the moment I envision Marilyn in skimpy leathers I expect her and the non-gelded T-Rex she's riding to be instantaneously generated by the system; from scratch.  <--real-time rendering
(and yes, my head-mounted-display is in the mail)

[Venkman]

And you're one of those people that still consider maple-story and MMO.

It is. As is Neopia. As is Habbo. It's not your MMO, and it's not even a business model directly comparable to your MMOs. But you're not getting it if you think a persistent world must be a 3D fantasy full screen immersive diku. There is no single market for "MMO".

But remember, without consoles like the PS3 there's a good chance people wouldn't have bought the Wii.

Incorrect. Completely different markets. It's like comparing WoW to Second Life. You're just not going to find a significant crossover because the appeal and therefore the markets are just that different.

Real-time rendering?  Immense player content?  Seamless worlds?  Integrated player-created instances?  True Sandboxes?  Photorealism?
It's not always about the polys either, it can just be about raw calculation.

UO. Just remove the photorealism that has long been proven to NOT be a requirement. See: COD4 vs Crysis or WoW vs EQ2. To achieve "better graphics" often means compromising resources that could have been allocated to things like better world design, better combat systems, better server architecture, better game play.

There's a place to push for cutting edge graphics. But the most successful games have been due to their appeal as games first.

I want a holo-deck too. But you need to remember that the shows that had them were about what went on in them, not just about how fancy they looked. When photoreal can be achieved, it's no longer a worthwhile achievement unto itself.

[sinij]

I'd definitely buy a lifetime account for that

Would you like to prepay for it? :P

Head mounted display? bah, I will make millions selling crotch-mounted controllers.

[Ingmar]

There's a place to push for cutting edge graphics. But the most successful games have been due to their appeal as games first.

This is correct. It should probably be pointed out, that in fact, there is little to no overlap in the skill sets required to create a good game and the skill set required to create a good engine, but we tend to lump these things together as end users when we're having our FUTURE AWESOME GAME fantasies.

[Tarami]

UO. Just remove the photorealism that has long been proven to NOT be a requirement. See: COD4 vs Crysis or WoW vs EQ2. To achieve "better graphics" often means compromising resources that could have been allocated to things like better world design, better combat systems, better server architecture, better game play.

Because thankfully, we've been graced with an imagination to fill in the deficiencies. Suggestion is a far more powerful tool for entertainment than cold fact.

[Ratman_tf]

And you're one of those people that still consider maple-story and MMO.

It is. As is Neopia. As is Habbo. It's not your MMO, and it's not even a business model directly comparable to your MMOs. But you're not getting it if you think a persistent world must be a 3D fantasy full screen immersive diku. There is no single market for "MMO".

Curious. Would you consider Gaia and/or Myspace to be MMOGs?

[Abelian75]

And the moment I envision Marilyn in skimpy leathers I expect her and the non-gelded T-Rex she's riding to be instantaneously generated by the system; from scratch.  <--real-time rendering

I know this is obviously a joke, but on a serious note this isn't actually real-time rendering you're asking for.  Rendering is turning data into an image, and we can already do rather realistic real-time rendering of dinosaurs.  What you're asking for here is generating the DATA on the fly.  We don't see many games generating a dinosaur model on demand... but that's not real-time rendering.  That's more like crazily good dynamic content generation.

[Murgos]

What you're asking for here is generating the DATA on the fly.  We don't see many games generating a dinosaur model on demand... but that's not real-time rendering.  That's more like crazily good dynamic content generation.

A few do it, Spore being the most noticeable (GalCiv with its on-the-fly ship designer is probably the second most prominent title, followed in a lesser sense by almost any game with a random map).  There are pretty good reasons why almost no one attempts that sort of thing on a major scale, it's just not needed for 99.99% of what the designers want to do.

edit: Note that this sort of procedural generation is not actually that processor dependent, it's more the scale of effort that goes into the design that's limiting.

Edit2 - Daggerfall, Dwarf Fortress is a great example, there's many more.