MMO demos should not need a full client install

[Soln]

Dear Cryptic, NCSoft, Mythic and others.

You do not need me to install the full fucking client of your game for a demo.

If I only have a free weekend or a few days of play, then chances are I won't need all 5GB of goodness that you provide.  I probably won't get very far.  I very probably don't need all that 5GB and more.

If I want to subscribe, then you should be able to patch in the fun later.  Making people wait a few hours just to try your title is a testimony to why your game very probably sucks.  Bravo.

[Trippy]

Most (all?) of those are trials not demos. E.g. in the City of Heroes/City of Villains trial you play on the same servers and in the same zones as regular players. There's a level limit which does restrict somewhat where you can go but most of the world is available for you to travel around (assuming you are careful in the higher level zones).

[Dark_MadMax]

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

[IainC]

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

Thank you for that measured and reasonable reply. Now kindly set yourself on fire.

[Azazel]

wow. where did this one come from? 

[DraconianOne]

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

Thank you for that measured and reasonable reply. Now kindly set yourself on fire.

Seconded.

[apocrypha]

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

These aren't the forums you're looking for. You can go about your business.

[Fordel]

Isn't this pretty much why a lot of other MMO's are going to streaming clients? Guild Wars has been doing it for a long time and WoW has jumped on board with their Cata client.

[DraconianOne]

Cant' remember the full details and CBA to look it up but the WoW trial pretty much lets you start playing as soon as humanly possible by only downloading what's needed to get you going or something. Pretty sure I remember someone raving about it in the WoW forum.

One of the main reasons I don't think I could ever bring myself to try Age of Conan again is the size of the install required. I did it for the first 10 day trial and all I remember was it taking fucking forever to download the patches even after I installed it from disc. I daren't imagine what it's like now after two years worth of patches and new content and fuck that for trial reasons.

[UnSub]

Vanguard has a small demo area to install... but then the main client is something like 15 GB.

[Mrbloodworth]

I am a big fan of system like that of Wizard 101, Free Realms, or what turbine was attempting to do with the turbine launcher. Basically, areas by logical chunks downloaded while you play, or one "step/zone" before you encounter them.

[Viin]

WoW also has a smaller version of their client for 30 day trials. (noob areas and a little extra I think)

[ghost]

Vanguard has a small demo area to install... but then the main client is something like 15 GB.

Vanguard.   

[SnakeCharmer]

WoW also has a smaller version of their client for 30 day trials. (noob areas and a little extra I think)

Yup.  Trial account creation to playing the game takes about 15 minutes.  It's pretty freaking amazing.

[Morfiend]

WoW also has a smaller version of their client for 30 day trials. (noob areas and a little extra I think)

You are correct.  I believe it also streams in other areas as you play. But I could be wrong about that, I haven't played the trial in a while.

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

Kindly take your own advice. 

[WindupAtheist]

Wow you are retarded -  what do you want that demos have stick figures instead of models and no textures? Ohh I guess you didnt know what those 5gb are actually used for, you thought it just to make you download for long. Please die - ppl that ignorant and that stupid should not live

Very poor flame, and shit like "ppl" just doesn't fly here. You need to work on your grammar, punctuation, and insults if you expect to be anything but the local village idiot.

[tmp]

Isn't this pretty much why a lot of other MMO's are going to streaming clients? Guild Wars has been doing it for a long time and WoW has jumped on board with their Cata client.

Yeah, the Guild Wars streaming approach was really nice thing when i got to try it. If i'm not mistaken Turbine also makes some use of it, at least in some of their titles?

[Xuri]

One of the main reasons I don't think I could ever bring myself to try Age of Conan again is the size of the install required. I did it for the first 10 day trial and all I remember was it taking fucking forever to download the patches even after I installed it from disc. I daren't imagine what it's like now after two years worth of patches and new content and fuck that for trial reasons.

The actual trial-download for Age of Conan is only a couple of gigs now, I think, and includes stuff like character-creation, the initial jungles of Tortage (levels 1-5) and possibly the city of Tortage itself. Then you can, through the patcher, selectively download data for the level 1-20 playfields (i.e. all other areas on Tortage), 20-60 playfields, 60-80 playfields and Expansion-playfields. If you don't make the patcher download the data for the additional areas, it will get streamed to your client as you go to those areas.

I'm pretty sure the same options exist in the patcher for the full game as well.

[Lantyssa]

EQ2 has moved to a streaming client, too.

[fuser]

Looked into the WoW 30 day trial client a few years ago now

TryWoW.exe is 1.02MB, then the first "Download" is ~92MB which gets you to the WoW login/realm selection(with full music bonus). I cannot play with it any further because my account is TBC enabled and it punts you straight out after selecting a realm.

It works for the full old world game but fails past TBC/WoTLK as they never setup the data that way on their servers. The cata trial client should work well because everyone will be playing again in the new revamped old world.

[Numtini]

Guess. By the time most games reach "trial account" stages, they've already failed and developing a streaming client is a bit expensive for a game that's probably on life support.

[Soln]

Guess. By the time most games reach "trial account" stages, they've already failed and developing a streaming client is a bit expensive for a game that's probably on life support.

That's probably the reason, yes.  But I would have thought that STO and ChampO would've had better packages since they are only a year old.  And anyone new (hopefully GW2) adopts this model.  Turbine moved last year to a demo streaming client, and EQ2X as Lant says also has a great streaming front-end.  With EQ2X I was in the game maybe within 10 minutes?   The STO demo client is still near 4GB I think, but the killer is that it then does a full patch lasting maybe an hour?  Having to patch indiscriminately -- that I don't understand at all.

Edit: re. what Trippy said makes sense -- if you have an existing toon then you'll want to retry the game with potentially all the zones you once had access.  But in the case of actual demos, not welcome back weekends, I still don't get why one needs the full meal deal.  Particularly when you have to create a new and flagged demo account to get in.  Less friction FTW.

[Numtini]

I can't remember exactly, but the streaming EQ2 client has been around for a long time. I think going back to the introduction of the faeries?

And yes, a lot of times the client for download is woefully out of date which is particularly galling given the sad way most patchers work. That's not limited to second rate companies either, I can remember needing to grab a half dozen updates for WoW off of fileplanet to patch it up.

[Ard]

The turbine ones have been around forever also.  They all got made post-launch, but before those games got put on life support, which is basically the same as you were saying earlier.

[Famine]

Cant' remember the full details and CBA to look it up but the WoW trial pretty much lets you start playing as soon as humanly possible by only downloading what's needed to get you going or something. Pretty sure I remember someone raving about it in the WoW forum.

One of the main reasons I don't think I could ever bring myself to try Age of Conan again is the size of the install required. I did it for the first 10 day trial and all I remember was it taking fucking forever to download the patches even after I installed it from disc. I daren't imagine what it's like now after two years worth of patches and new content and fuck that for trial reasons.

We are trying to improve our trials in that respect. I think most people forget how hard it is to basically clip a small piece out of your game and make it only playable for a certain segment of people. No matter how you slice it, you still have to get that full install. Thus, it's pretty damn hard unless you completely switch how your full retail client works all together (i.e.: switching to streaming only).

I also don't think you could ever get around the patching process. Online games will always have patches on installs. You can only make your best efforts to keep what trials or builds out there as up-to-date as possible. But, when you're talking about a large-scale install -- it can be painfully hard. So there is no easy route to take regardless of the direction you want to go. 

[Nonentity]

Having tooled around with the new WoW streaming client in the beta, I can say that is pretty snazzy - there are three states it can be in - Red, Yellow and Green. Red you simply can't login at all, and Green is pretty much everything is loaded. The interesting part is Yellow, where you can log into the world, but you might miss out on a prop here or there, and it is filled in by an invisible purple shimmering hitbox until the item is rendered. There will also be times where you are rooted in place while it finishes downloading the immediate chunks of the world around you.

No idea how they are doing that, but the patching process is much, much faster, and you can get in quite a bit faster.

[fuser]

The interesting part is Yellow, where you can log into the world, but you might miss out on a prop here or there, and it is filled in by an invisible purple shimmering hitbox until the item is rendered. There will also be times where you are rooted in place while it finishes downloading the immediate chunks of the world around you.

Sounds like when you load into Dalaran on a slower computer or such. The basic world is loaded first so you move around but objects and people slowly load in as the objects and textures catch up. Probably a bastardization of this compiling a list of art assets in range and then starting to stream/load each one.