f13.net

Ever since I first saw this in ToonTown it's been a brilliant thing that should be a standard. The longer it takes for people to actually interact with a game, the less likely they are to be there when the interaction is ready for them. So this is top notch smart!

How is this different than Guild Wars?

Beginning with Book 14 on Roheryn, new players will experience a “tiered” download; meaning that after a relatively small initial download, they can jump right into character creation. While they’re creating their characters, the new player (newbie) instance will download in the background; while they’re playing the newbie instance, the public newbie instance will download, and while they’re playing through those first few levels of the public newbie instance, the remainder of the game will download in the background. There may be brief periods of waiting while the next tier is downloading, particularly for new players with slower internet connections, but the wait time has been significantly reduced from the days when the entire game had to be downloaded and installed before a new player ever reached character creation!

The Turbine Download Manager also offers the following features:

    * Peer-to-peer downloading, allowing you to download files even faster
    * More control over your download experience
    * Set overall capacity and speed limits
    * Schedule downloads by time of day and day of week
    * Set limits based on what other applications you are running
    * Pause and have the download automatically resume at a later time
    * UPnP support (if your router and firewall support it and are configured correctly).

I hope all MMO's do this in the future.

One of the big ones that will go live with Book 14 is a chained series of "Battlefield" instances. These are special missions that open in sequence only when beaten a certain number of times within a specific time period. They include an assault on the city of Aughaire, a confrontation at the so-called Angmarim "Line-of-Death" and a final attack on Carn Dun itself. "The idea here is to make the world feel more alive by letting players participate in the actual war."
Battlefield instances will begin with an announcement that the Free People-allied city of Aughaire is under assault by the forces of the False King. Players who choose to do so will enter the instance to find a skirmish line of Aughaire tribesmen defending against Angmarim soldiers. The goal is to defend Aughaire for 45 minutes and save a certain number of allied tribesmen. "We wanted these instances to present players with more tactical battles that require some strategy to solve," Steefel said. To that end, the instances are somewhat randomized as to where defenders and attackers will appear. The second instance (which opens when Aughaire is successfully defended a number of times) is a conflict at the "Line of Death" in Angmar. The line of guardian statues that slaughter anyone who crossed their path has been strengthened by Angmarim sorceresses who must be killed to beat the scenario. Finally the players will take part in the assault on the gates of Carn Dun, in which they'll have to split their time between defending their base camps and taking important points within the town around the gates.

    * Peer-to-peer downloading, allowing you to download files even faster

Meaning for the majority of the player base, they're always uploading to other players while playing.  I'm not sure if this is brilliant or mind boggling more devious and cheaper than the Blizzard patcher.

Excellent idea. I had to leave my computer on all night to try out WOW.  I pay for unlimited downloads but still it was annoying as hell.

Meaning for the majority of the player base, they're always uploading to other players while playing.  I'm not sure if this is brilliant or mind boggling more devious and cheaper than the Blizzard patcher.

Well long as you used the trial after January the WoW trial does the same thing ;)

It was a triel I bought in a shop. all I saw was patch after patch after patch bing downloaded and applied. I think it was march I tried it.

I'll play around with the LOTRO one last night as I wanted to do give it try, but their webpage at the moment still has the 3gb/5gb trial downloads instead of the tiered downloader (http://download.lotro.level3.turbine.com/tdm_live/lotroRH_setup.exe)

Its still in beta.