f13.net

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/warhammeronline/news.html?sid=6191574&tag=newlyadded;title;1

My eagerness for this just growing.  AoC bored me after a week, it never felt like a WORLD, only like towns connected radially and disparately to instanced zones.  It was BG with neater melee combat.  WAR still sounds like it will be a world. 

There is a crafting vid as well.  MJ needs more practice talking on camera. :oh_i_see:

I think the market is getting resistant to the hype.  Notice how hype for AoC didn't ramp up until it's release was emminent.  WAR, I suspect, will be the same.  Even more so if WAR actually drops the whole NDA before the release unlike HGL or AoC.  But at this point its just wishful thinking.  And people are getting tired of being mislead by it.

Seriously?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUR86bnKLaI&feature=related

Not a rickroll.

Meh...

Sounds like an interesting class. But after playing AoC, Warhammer's old school autoattack combat is going to feel like a big step backwards.

...

 :nda:

Oh, joy.  Leave me my illusions, sir. 

You can (not) say that again.

I tried playing Wow again (my GF needed some help with something and my account still has a month), its so fucking slow...really slow in comparison. Movement, travel, combat...all a snails pace.

Yeah I don't quite get this Triforcer.  Do you think Warhammer won't have zones and instancing?  Because everything I've seen points to almost as much as AoC.

Well, I know certain things from certain sites that would be gauche to name aloud, even though we've all went to them.  But from publicly disclosed information, I have never gotten the impression that the exp zones were instanced, like in AoC.  I don't know why, but instanced XP zones just killed AoC immersion for me. 

I barely notice them.

at 51 I'm starting to have some reservations about the combat...

Honestly I don't see how, technically, any game touting mass PVP with art more complex than ascii sprites can not have some sort of instancing. WoW doesn't have instancing per se but you drop a 40-man Horde raid in Stormwind or Ironforge and the entire continent goes into a death spiral, and that's with WoW's toonerville graphics. It doesn't look like the technology is really there yet.

Graphics are near irrelevant. Its update packets and frequency that really matter. AOC is more real time transfer, Wow is 100% cue-based with less intervals for update rate.

I'll agree combat feel faster but movement and travel? Ugh, maybe mounts are a godsend but running all the way to the fields of the dead on foot is not something I consider fast in any way. Add to that AOC zones are generally smaller than wow it makes the sin of long travel times worse.  The game has its high points but being fast isn't one of them.

Back on subject of WAR though, I really hope it has less instancing than aoc. Aoc just goes way overboard, not only is every outdoor zone, every small dungeon, every large dungeon, well everything instanced. It also gives multiple instances OF those instances so really you never have to play with more than ten other people. it kind of ruins the whole MM in mmo for me, like if i ask a guildy to help me with a quest in the fields and he gets there:

"i'm by the grave, i see the boss where are you?"

"I'm standing right by the grave"

"wait, which instance of the fields are you in?"

"I'm in three, you?"

"damn, I'm in two. Hold on"


This, right here really bothers me because it's not a world anymore it's just a series of instances all strung together via code.  I could even go on to say how all pvp in this game even on FFA servers would be considered sport pvp since there is no one static WORLD for it.  I play online games over consoles and pc fps because I feel like I'm a part of something bigger, in aoc I don't feel that. I really hope WAR avoids this.

Complaining about being in the wrong instance from your buddy is nitpicking as far as I am concerned as long as going to his or him coming to your is a click and load away. All you have to do is meet up once, group and the problem won't surface again. Instancing allows for faster developed and more tightly designed content which is what we all say we want.

It makes me wonder why they even have multiple servers of the same type in the same region.

I think that WAR said only Scenerios and PvE-only dungeons would be instance.

Here's my point.........................................................here's you.

I'm well aware of what instancing everything does, I'm well aware it makes programming easier, it makes designing content easier. Single player console games or even small multiplayer games know this as well. Therein lies my point, aoc with it's massive instancing no longer becomes a massively multiplayer game. Yes your server may have the same 1k-2k people with character but how many of those will you see, how often? We might as well be playing on xbox live and that's not what I want in an online subscription game.

I'll give you an example (wow of course because my memory from eq1 days is too poor)

my server had one uber guild in the beginning, which disbanded due to drama(suprise) so no one hordeside was doing endgame content, meanwhile the alliance was progressing faster and faster. So one day my raid alliance finally killed onyxia, the first kill in months and for the players, it was a big deal. So we were going to turn in the head, we took our whole raid group and rand to the crossroads, mounted up and began a walking procession all the way to orgrimmar.  Well it turned out by the time we got there word had gotten out and a lot pf people were gathered, some for buffs, others out of curiousity. Entering those gates, seeing the main road left open, with either side lined with dozens of horde members(many i didnt even know) and marching in on my horse, was an experience I'll never forget.

Moments like that won't happen in such heavily instanced games.(don't tell me it's possible, of course it is but it wouldn't be the same)

Personally I think anyone bitching about how immersive pve instances aren't needs to remember the alternative.

Spawn timers and reappearing bad guys.


Seriously, are you people suggesting that having to enter the same zone as your friends is less immersive than endless mobs popping into existence in front of you or having to queue up to kill to Ass-Goblin of the Eternal Monkey Nut?

This. If AoC wasn't as heavily instanced as it was places like the Field of Dead (level 40+ questing zone) would be jam packed with multiple groups surrounding spawn points each trying to tag one mob to get a quest update.

Of course it would make pvp servers more interesting.

Side note - I'm still more eager to play WAR then I am to see how much of the missing AoC content (Crafting, cities etc...) gets added.

It may seem strange but I think it is more immersive. Note I didn't say it was fun.

Compare basic run speed of any Wow toon, to that of AoC. Its instantly noticeable, and i didn't even hit sprint in Aoc.

 

To reply to a couple posts.

Run speed? I'll chalk that up to very subjective, to me it feels slow(and the zones 'feel' small)  but your mileage may vary.

As for the instancing I like to think there is a happy medium. First off there are alwayus going to be hordes of people figfhting for the same quest objective in the first month of release because everyone is doing those quests at the same time, the alternative to make sure it never happens is to instance everything and if you do that, are you really playing an MMO?

I like the idea of instancing dungeons and the whole concept of rare spawns for quests or to drop super rare loot to me is frankly stupid. There's a lot of wow hate and I do understand it but one of the things I think they did right was balancing the game world to feel immersive and fun while not making the quests feel like an uphill battle with the rest of the server.

I really think people are not understanding the concept of massively multiplayer here. If you want to play the whole game with 6 friends that's fine and you should be able to do so in some games, I'm not telling you how to have fun. What I am saying though is that is not massively multiplayer, you're not part of a world and for all intents and purposes everyone else outside your guild on the server doesn't exist.

let's say someone destroys the bat country keep(haha working seiges) now what have they really accomplished? they beat one guild, one one zone, in one instance of that zone. So guild pwnage now rules the purple lotus swamp.....3 of 15 how is that epic at all? how is that immersive?  How is world pvp meaningful if your guild lies in wait to ambush a gathering party from a rival guild when they can just, poof into another instance to be left alone.

It just boggles my mind really because online games are not that good. At least they're not as good as their single player counterparts when it comes to sheer gameplay. The whole point of them is that you play with other people for whatever reason, glory socialization it doesn't matter. Otherwise you're just killing 100 rats all by yourself and to me, I don't know if I'd call that fun.

So, every MMO ever was not an MMO. Except Wow and Dark and Light and vanguard.

Even eq1 had instances/zones.

I really do not notice the instances in Aoc, really don't, and there is as many, if not more people in each zone/instance i go into as any other game. I am not seeing the issue here, unless you like walking to the bottom of a dungeon with nothing to attack, because the 5 groups before you already cleared it, and standing in line for the boss.

I do understand where people come from with this...it is it really an issue? Really?

I didn't care for it in City of Heroes and I don't care for it in AoC, but it is a fairly minor issue. I think the way WoW handles instancing is perfect.

I'm calling bullshit on this whole thing lakov, have you even played AoC?

The instancing is hardly noticable, and you and a friend never had a "what instance are you in?" conversation, since you can never tell what instance you're actually in.

There aren't 15 of every instance, they are created and deleted on demand, the only time I can get by with not seeing many other people is if I purposely change into an instance that just opened.

The  numbers per instance seem high. I'll have to check out Conall Valley Friday night to see how many players would be in that zone without instancing. My guess would be in the 200 range, which would bring a WoW server to its knees.

Also lets not forget that instancing subsides when the server population spreads out and stabilizes. You'd be hard pressed to find a second Atlas Park instance in COH for example, maybe on prime time on weekends. (Just a guess, havent played COH in ages)

I think the instancing itself is fine and I'm usually really picky with the immersion aspects. I only wish they hadn't made every zone into an isolated pocket of content, but rather strung them together so you could atleast leave a town through a gate and end up on the other side of the same gate. Opposed to talking to an NPC and end up God knows where in relation to where I were.

So Diablo is a MMO?

I havn't played AoC, but I have played Guild Wars. Guild Wars is not a MMO if you ask me, it's a co-operative online game. The closer AoC or any game gets to Guild Wars the less MMO it is.

That doesn't mean it's a better or worse game, but it does mean certain things.


I have never had any significant problems with WoW in this regard. There have been fleeting moments, that's it. On the other hand I have had countless moments there the non instanced aspect of the WoW 'world' has made the game more fun for me.


Yes.


If AoC world instancing only comes into effect when dealing with crippling situations, rather than being implemented for convenience only, then I doubt I'd have a problem with it. I would much prefer they push the number of people held in a zone as far as they possibly can up to that point, though.


It took WoW a while to get to the point they are at without issues, however, and this is important to bear in mind for a new MMO.

I run around in AoC zones and see loads of people. You're just as likely to see other players running around as in WoW.

It's not an issue of the place being populated. It's an issue of it being instanced. I'll assume Lakov has a similar view. It's about the world feeling like a world. This is not just communicated by seeing other people running around, but by feeling that the place is a single consistent place.

You have 650 that play a game, sometimes all 650 are online, sometimes only 200 are online. What seems more world-like to you:

a) A place that is sometimes crowded (650), sometimes empty (200),

or,

b) A place that never has more than 150 people, and very often always 150 people (150 4/5 times when full, 150 1/2 when empty)?

Example is obviously not realistic, just there to demonstrate that instances force a sort of relationship between the player and the playing area, giving it less of a dynamic feel.

This bothers me almost as much as the instancing.  I never felt like the zones connected, it was more like Tortage and Khemi were the Yahoo chess game lobby that whisked me away to random, separate games. 

But the alternative is Vanguard's 20 minute trots across empty fields or WoW/EQ2 griffon rides.  Travel times are one of the first things that players complain about after a month or two. It also makes alts even more boring to level up. The only difference with Conan is that I cannot say "well, if you want to sightsee you can but don't force it on the rest of us."

It feels just about right to me.  I don't notice I'm in an instance and there are enough people around to see constant activity without having a crazy amount crowding the town square, like say WoW.  (Possibly too many for the hunting instances, but things seem to be fixing themselves as people spread out.)

I don't even think about it in-game though.  I notice long enough to find where my group-mates are and promptly forget.  If you're fixiated on how OMG not everyone is in the same instance to see how awesome you are, then I guess it could be a problem.

Also collision detection + hordes of people = fail.  Imagine Stormwind with collision detection on.

Its fine and dandy they chose this approach in AoC, its just not a MMORPG game for me because of the mini-instanced-zones.

I had the same problem with DDO.   Heck, I the zone effect in EQ1 wasn't to my liking either, let alone the instancing.

They had no instanced zones, huge seemless world, collision detection, full PvP in Asheron's Call in 1999, but in 2008 they can't do that anymore?  Uhh, OK, I guess computers aren't that much faster then...

Just because AC did it doesn't mean it should be done again. Lantyssa's point about collision and large crowds is an excellent one.

Maybe I'm strange, but that was one of my favorite parts of Vanguard. Actually I know I am strange. I really really liked Vanguard and would have put up with all the bugs happily if my friends would have also.  Also the empty fields to me help with the immersion. Take EQ2, long travel there sucks since every zone is jammed packed it seems. As much as a like EQ2 to me that is not immersive, that is every zone being an amusement park. Which is a different kind of fun.

QFT


QFT

Click the little triangle to change instances on white sands or the underhalls, now imagine all of those people in the same zone.

Yeah, it might add "immersion" but no one would be able to fucking do anything.

To complain about instancing you first need to complain about quest design. If we all didn't have to kill X mob to progress to the next quest then instancing wouldn't be a problem.

WOW TJAT WITE LIONM LOOKS COOL!  :grin:

IT'S A LION!  GET IN THE CAR!!!

 :awesome_for_real:

Travel times and instancing aren't really related. You can put teleporters all over WoW and have no travel time, but you'd still have the same instancing structure.

Also, the instanced newbie zone issue only ever comes up for the first two months of a game's existence.

Both EQ2 and CoH used the same system, it fixes itself after a couple of months when players are spread around the world. Atlas Park and Galaxy City almost never have instances anymore, the only zones that ever do are new zones for the first couple weeks after they get patched in.

I tried not to post in this thread, really. But I can't help myself.

Triforcer, if AoC doesn't feel like a world to you because areas aren't seamlessly connected and/or loading screens exist, I think you might have a bigger problem.

AoC is Hyboria brought to life. Like, seriously totally and completely brought to life. It's downright impressive. So impressive it made me buy the books to re-read them after almost (or maybe more) than a decade.

Can you imagine AoC trying to do what Vanguard did so poorly itself, 'streaming' the zone loading? It would splutter and choke in a bad way. I'm glad for the load pages. Even then, often the NPCs won't pop right away. THAT one can kvetch about.

I'm seconding this. If you have read any of the E. Howard books Hyboria in AoC will really shine. Heck, even without knowing anything the visuals should be stunning. Check the pictures I'm posting in AoC's screenshot thread in 10 mins.

On topic : FUCK YES! High Elves are the dominant race for me now, can't believe anything surpassed my love for Greenskins in WAR, but with the current classes its really a win win. I will roll every High Elf archetype on live realms  :grin:

And then regret it five minutes later when you remember what others sorts of people always roll elves in MMOGs.  :grin:

I always roll elf  :ye_gods:

oh cmon, Humans are always the best tank. Elves are the quickest ,  Dark Elves are the most powerful casters and Dwarves are ugly.

And trolls are the best bridge builders!

don't forget dorfs loves beer. It's like a stereotyping of sorts. Most dwarves are either smoking or drinking in their spare time but they still get the highest HP

I'm with the masochistic people who don't like instancing.  I don't mind zones, or instancing in certain instances (solo questlines come to mind), but I far prefer Vanguard to Guild Wars.  I enjoyed it taking an hour to travel the world to meet up with your friends in EQ (especially because once you were slightly less noob you could just pay for a port...).  I like location actually being relevant when it comes to gameplay and also the player community.  As far as travel goes, I'm the kind of person that when playing Oblivion would only fast travel if I had already covered every square inch of territory between my two destinations. 

In the end I feel like AoC would have been much better off as a single player action RPG.  I suppose that will change when you get to 80 and the end game becomes raiding/guild PvP, but as far as leveling goes there's no reason for there to be another person in the game world.  However in a game without massive instancing and WoW based solo quest progression, community becomes much more relevant.  (too bad Vanguard failed so hard, since it's likely to be the last attempt at such a thing...ever.)

Oh, back on topic, I have a massive desire to play the high elf swordmaster in WoW+DAOC.  Does that make me gay?

The instancing is ruining AoC for me :(

It breaks immersion, adds to the feeling that this isn't a world but a bunch of separate single player games stapled together AND it doesn't solve the "too many players, not enough mobs" problem.

WoW has the instancing right IMO, apart from the PvP but that's another story :p

I really don't get this at all.  At all.

All this instancing wahhhh wahhh has gotta give a damn good counter to the solution of collision detection aside from making all players as gaseous substance ala WoW, there's just no way you can hope to integrate collision detection and non-instancing together. It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server.

That's why I had more to my post than just the bit you quoted... :P

I don't like the feel of it. If it solved the mob-camping problems then I'd be more accepting of it. But it doesn't. Interesting thing about humans, they feel differently about things. We don't all think and feel the same. I don't like the instancing. Can't help it, that's just the way it is.

Unless had a way for people to push thru others, say after 5 seconds of trying. Wonder if any upcoming games have that implemented.

Don't see the problem. Collision Detection for enemies only.....problem solved.....

Also, people talk as if no form of collision detection has ever been implemented in a MMOG. Guess what, half the mmogs you've played prevented you walking through other characters, and the sky did not fall, you didn't even fucking notice.

You only ever really notice it when it isn't there in games that desperately need it. DAoC, SB, and SWG, I'm looking at you.

I don't think AOC feels like a world to me, but I don't think it has anything to do with the fact that it is instanced. It's the way the zones feel. They feel very, very "gamey" and not "worldy" at all. They feel a whole lot like zones in NeverWinter Nights, which never felt like they were part of a world. Maybe this will change when I get out of the noob zones, but the ones I've seen thus far (the mountain zone by the barbarian starting area and the desert zone by the snake-worshiping dudes, and some of the dungeons in both) feel very disconnected and modular to me.  It's difficult for me to put my finger on, and it's not a dealbreaker for me, but the AOC world feels a lot more like NWN or GuildWars than EQ, WOW, or Baldur's Gate.

Agree.  Worded better than I could frame it.  Its an indefinable feel thing.

One thing I really noticed in the open beta was how strongly you were channelled onto paths, at least in the newbie zone. No wandering off wherever you felt like it. That feels very gemey to me. "This way to your next points pinata". In contrast, in the WoW newbie zones, you can wander where you want and get into trouble.

Is this just the newbie zones? Do the higher level zones open out?

I said right away that it was very Bioware-ish to me. Even though I prefer "worlds", that's not necessarily a bad thing to me. Just depends if it was well designed or not. That's usually not mmos' strong suit, but I think it was pulled off pretty well here.

What it feels like is Star Wars Galaxies. Each region is just another planet.

In fact, it's exactly like Star Wars Galaxies.

This is a good thing.

Once you get out of Tortage, you are opened up a little bit. It's still like WOW though, there are quest lines and they more or less tell you what to do and where to go.

I believe they made a mistake with Tortage. It should have been offline and solo and one time like the original plan.

I don't know why you say that. Three of us tore through the ruins last night and all got loot as well as finished the entire ruins line. I ended up going from 1 to 20 in just under 7 hours. I'm not seeing why offline solo would have been better? It would be more than aggravating as there are classes that simply can't finish some missions without more trouble than it's worth. As such, simply by the nature of it being multiplayer, it makes up for many of the early level shortcomings.

That would be incredibly dumb in a PvP game.

The offline-solo idea was back when the thinking was you only needed to do 1-20 once, thereafter /level'ing level 20 alts. It is a good run through, the first, maybe second, time. By the fifth time though, eh, not so much. That has nothing to do with speed and everything to do with repetition. People accept that at the end game mostly because that's all there is to do, and by then they're probably addicted to their character and any form of advancement left to them.

The Tortage portion of the game was designed to be linear. SWG was never this linear until the NGE content. That actually made SWG better for some players, but it was a retrofit for the majority of folks who were there when it happened. Here, it just feels too constricting... but mostly because it wasn't the original intent.

Having said that, I don't mind that pre-20 is public. It is an MMO, and you should see other players early on. And I suspect that in time, they'll have the /level command put in. They just shouldn't do it now until a) there's actual good content through to the end; and, b) the build in the totality of what they intend for post-20 PvP (cities, sieges, etc).

Really?  WoW was about as linear a feel as anything I've ever played.  Go here now, okay you're done there now go over there, once you're done there move over to that spot.  Just because there is a 5-10 second pause as I go to those different areas in AoC doesn't make it feel any less open to me.

In WoW you could choose to follow the quest path. In AoC Tortage area, you don't have much choice. The first, err, 5 levels I think it is, you go from beach down path to gate down path to Pick village, back up path to gate, gate through gorillas to Tortage front gate. Then is when you start the WoW cycle of following the quest markers if you want.

It's actually a pretty good premise for first time users. It focuses the user just on what they need to know at that exact moment. You need to know how to walk, then talk, then use a weapon, and are somewhat restricted from doing anything else. You could walk up the beach to kill the sailers before talking to the chick in shackles. But in order to progress to Tortage (the first quest you get, which is an automatically-begun dialog), you need to talk to her anyway.

It only feels restrictive the third time through.

Why?

Only problems with this I can think of are the stack problem, which is easily solved by not pussying out on aoe code like SB did, and instead letting aoes hit an unlimited number of targets within the radius; and alternating retreating front lines to screw up melee targetting - which is easily solved by a damage multiplier on retreating targets.

I can see more issues in an open PvP game where you don't know who the enemy is, but that doesn't apply here, or does it?

One of the things I enjoy in WoW is exploring areas long before I am "supposed" to. So I don't follow the official trail much. In WoW there usually isn't much to stop you wandering where you like, at least outdoors. As Darniaq says, in AoC its pretty much a physical constraint. But I only played till level 13. If it broadens out after that, OK.

The pre-20 game is very different from the post-20.  There are plenty of places to wander about once out of Tortage.

For those that think AoC doesn't allow exploration before then, have you been through all the Undertombs, the Archeon Ruins, and White Sands?  Those are all decent-sized areas this early in the game with lots of nooks and crannies.  They're not huge, but you'll find the next areas too large.  If you haven't seen the Gorilla Queen on an isolated island, I'm not sure you've done all the exploring you think you have.

With the exception of some bosses who generally don't give you anything when you defeat them, there isn't anything to do in those nooks and crannies, for the most part.  The one thing that I hate in game, are doors that you can't open!  I'm glad to find interesting looking places but it would be nice if there were also interesting things about them.  Maybe if you could start a quest in them or find an NPC with a story... anything would be better than pretty stream, interesting ruins, useless boss.

I care as little about WAR as most the people in this thread....from the looks of it. Autoattack, no thanks.

Might as well change the name to "WAR...How will it Instance compared to AoC"

I'm looking forward to WAR.  I very much like the look of it.

Yes, back on subject:

I really hate elves.  I don't think I care much for white lions with elf ears either.

Enjoy your Siegfried and Roy class. Big axes can't save this one.  If I end up playing WAR, Order is definitely out of the question. 

Although the Dorf Engineer thing really fascinates me, I'm all for being a gob or an orc.  I'm hoping for slutty goblin armour, too. 

Bad news...

Greenskins are genderless, they reproduce via spores or something.

Orcs are genderless, but it is 40k Orks you are thinking of with the spores.

Orks are sentient fungus. The precise mechanics of reproduction have been retconned more than once, but they have, at times, involved the release of spores.

Orcs method of reproduction has never been officially determined, similarly the relationship between Orcs and Orks is officially unknown (as is the wider relationship between the Warhammer fantasy world and the 40k universe)

Actually there are female orcs in Blood Bowl. True story.

 :-)

I know Orcs and Gobs are genderless.  That doesn't mean I don't want slutty armour for them or that I won't give sexy girl names like Pusetta and Snoterella.

I'm kind of wondering if you realize she's talking about this (http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/screenshots/Greenskin-Shaman-003.jpg) in slutty armor.  Reproduction ain't in it.

 :nda: and all... but Squig Herding to victory is the path for me  :rock_hard: and the dorf engineers are really really fucking cool.'

I have to admire or give props to a company that does pvp with so many classes that don't have a direct equivalent in another team/realm.  Balance is a nightmare, but I think they learned from some of Daoc's major balancing issues.

I do need to upgrade my computer :P

And i dont' know wtf people are talking about when they mention "all the instancing in WAR"

Why is every genderless race male?

Stop talking about your Beta experience.

Every class has a karmic pairing.

Sorc=Bright Wizard (Glass cannon)

Swordmaster=Black Orc (progression mechanic tank)

Magus=Engineer (turrets)

Witch Hunter=Witch Elf (combo melee DPS)

White Lion=Squig Herder (pet DPS, although the first is melee and the latter is range)

and so forth.  Check out Massively's weeklong WAR feature for the latest rundown on everything.  Although given how supposedly different WoW racials made identical classes, even a few different skills might make the gameplay of the karmic twins different.

I rather like that... Hopefully it keeps on working if/when Skaven or whatever make it in.

Haven't played Mass Effect?

I'm having serious fun in AoC but that does not wipe out any desire to play WAR and I'm very excited about it. As a DAoC fan, I'm anxious to see what Mythic's next game looks like and how it plays.  I also really like what I'm reading on Massively. Can't wait!

/flex

 :grin:

|--- Macho --- Male --- Female ---|
        +1           0             -1

This diagram shows how male falls in the middle of the gender spectrum and represents genderless entities.

ow, my penis

In 40k the orks are all a bunch of spore thingies that bring their ecosystem with them wherever they go the squigs and fungus they eat goes as well its the ork way of terraforming built into them by the brain boyz before the plague killed off their really smart ones.

In warhammer fantasy I am not sure if they were ever explicitly said to have no females but other than the cheerleaders for bloodbowl I have never seen any mention about any female orks at all.

Still it almost kinda make sense though why orks get goblins on their side as well since instead of making a male and female model they got orks and goblins. I am torn I really want to play an goblin shaman or squig herder but I also want to try a dwarven engineer. I know the magus plays a similar role to the dwarf but I just could not have as much fun yelling they are sappin mah sentries with a magis.

Yelling they are sappin mah flaming demon in TS will just get me laughed at.

I couldn't imagine AoC without instancing, you wouldn't ever be able to kill a goddamn thing.

How did every other MMO survive with only one instance of each outdoor zone until AoC taught us that not instancing was impossible?

Either near instant respawns or obscene camps.  Either option pretty much sucks.

Exactly. AoC's instancing is all load balancing related, like EQ2. It isn't a terrible implementation in the outdoor adventure zones. It just sucks in the instances with the Bosses, for which we have been taught that keeping those as public spaces sucks and leads to server calendars, killstealing and ninjalooting. Which happens in AoC. Again, it's like 5 years ago all over again.

Sorry, I'm not buying that.  EQ, UO, LOTRO, SWG, and WoW seemed to do ok. 

None of them "did OK."

Everyone bitched and moaned about it there also.

I'm not talking about dungeon or boss instances, I'm talking about outdoor grinding zone instances.  None of those games had them.

In WoW, for example, I liked world pvp.  I would hang out in the same couple zones and continually meet the same cast of characters.  It felt like a community.  Whereas in AoC, you are in a different instance every night,and you can't build any interesting PvP rivalries because POOF!!! Your opponent is gone.


And on the PvE side....trying to get a PUG group to come to the same place at the same time was bad enough.  Now there is a dimensional axis to that retardery.  A couple weeks ago, before I cancelled, I spent ten minutes teaching five people who didn't understand instances that although we were all in the same place, THEY WERE ALL IN DIFFERENT FUCKING DIMENSIONS. 

Everyone bitches and moans about everything. The fact people bitch and moan is not an arugument of itself.

WoW had some troubles at first, but once they fixed the system (spawns related to number of people in a zone/area) it is far and away the system I prefer. Even before then it wasn't a huge problem.

I played WoW at release and quit shortly after level 60. I hated many parts of the game, but if I had to choose between instancing less or instancing more than WoW I would go for less every time. Diablo with graphical chatrooms is not for me.

I think their outdoor instancing is entirely technically-based, for the same reason EQ2 went that direction late in beta too.

The other types of instancing though could be handled better though, because those are design choices.

You are fucking insane.  EQ had camps in the middle of outdoor zones that took days to get something to spawn and were the cause of uber griefing, bickering and whining to make AoC look like polite discussion at a dinner party.

UO had spawn areas where they were either camped and you better move on or (before the split) you fought for it.  Again uber griefing.

LOTRO I can't comment on.  SWG, when I played had nothing to camp and no point to killing anything at all, ever, other than pure grinding, great solution.  WoW simply upped the spawn rate and made any out-of-an instance 'required' mob simply worthless for anything other than if you had to get that specific quest item, it works but since there is no rare-item dropping outdoor world mob at all it's not even the same discussion.

Yeah, this. From low level to high, camps were problematic EVERYWHERE in EQ. Fuck, there were many times under level 15 at a kobold camp out in the ass-end of nowwhere on Faydwer, there were camping and kill-stealing issues. Shit, the term kill-stealing was BORN in EQ1 AFAIK because of these issues. They only lessened when the population spread out, but if you were in one of the popular outdoor zones, trying to camp for those scraps of experience, you were as likely to be involved in a kill-stealing instance as you were to level.

And then kill-stealing begat NPC-training, another EQ first! (probably an EQ only, because if I'm recalling correctly, DAOC had already figured out that this was bad)

Ya, there were no trains in DAoC. Minus the melee train in RvR, anyways.  :grin:

Well there was the ever classic train mobs into someone afk pbaoe lvling fun

Actually, training a stream of Giants to the Oasis beach (or any zone line) and then FD'ing was quite amusing but I digress.

I still don't get the point here.  Leaving aside EQ for the moment, WoW's approach works.  I think its hilarious that AoC fanbois are now saying "NONINSTANCED ZONES ARE UNPOSSIBLE!" when the most successful example in the genre (and other AAA mmos, like LOTRO) clearly demonstrate otherwise.  I repeat, what about AoC retroactively altered the laws of MMO physics?

And no rare-dropping outdoor mobs in WoW?  Wtf are you smoking?  Silver mobs?  Remember the Tidal Charm camp, pre-BC?

Tri, CoH has a blind where enemies become invisable.  Its gives a simular effect without the fustration of your whole screen going black.  I have, a couple times now, ran down a hall thinking it was empty only to discover I was blind and was neck deep in Arachnos troops.

Here is what doesn't work:

Mobs that respawn slowly and drop awesome tradeable gear at low frequency.

The problem is that changing that formula is nearly always a drop in immersion or fun-factor in some way. 100% drops take out the addictive gambling nature and fast respawns feels like an assembly-line approach. Dropping shitty gear makes the mob pointless, and making all worthwhile drops bind-on-pickup eliminates much of the point of trading.

I do agree that zoning instances in a poor approach. In FFXI how they have tried to deal with overworld high-value targets is maked them forced-spawn via some conditions. So you gather up the appropriate items, bring them to the right spot and the mob appears and is claimed automatically. Although I don't think they appear walking around on the overworld until you pop them, which kind of sucks.

Wrong website, friend  :awesome_for_real:  But thanks for the response. 

No, I blocked that out of my mind because I was absolutely bored to death by WoW.  You're not discussing positives and negatives of implementations or that there might be flaws with any particular system you're just blathering on about what YOU liked.  Great, party on dude, that doesn't make it the only, and certainly not the best, option.

This was somewhat rectified with yesterday's patch.  Several of us were getting a blue drops from insigificant mobs.  I had one.  Someone got something from a normal chest (at level 14 no less).  Someone else had two or three.  Others were making comments, so we weren't alone.

Yeah, I had two blue drops from random mobs in the space of about an hour while questing.  The first one was a complete surprise but when the second Jeweled Chest dropped I got a little excited, now if they could flesh out the loot a little more I could almost go Diablo II on them.

Seriously showers of loot falling out of the sky on a kill, with exciting sound effects, what's so hard about that?

To briefly interrupt the anti/pro AoC trolling that I, admittedly, initiated, WAR is hiring customer service people . . . to start in August.

http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=142

Our first real clue?  There is still no buzz about release date on the....ahem....site that everyone not in beta visits. 

I was talking about a PvE area or PvE dungeons....

"It'll be a fuckin problem when a bunch of retards decided to block a gate to a town by standing in a line on PVE server. "

Stop the presses, im going to praise AoC here. One thing they added recently was an ability to all classes called 'crouch' it allows you to move through other character and avoid collision detection though it gives you a movement penalty and you take more damage. To me that's really the perfect soultion, bam, now you can add collision detection to all games without people exploiting it.

BTW:

New Newsletter with more info on PvE Instances, Guilds and ..........

The Guild Beta !!!

Yay!

Also:
 This guy  (http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/newsletter/06_2008/dw_armor_NPC_Trainer.jpg) really makes me wanna play Dwarfs instead of a gobbo...