Deep within WotLK lays a wonderfull technique that's called "Phasing". Oh, Blizzard mentioned it a few times, but hey they let the players discover things. Within WotLK is indeed the new MMORPG revolution. Your world is no longer the same as ... my world in Wow 2009. And for those who think they saw phasing at work in the Sunwell patch (2.4), let me say that compares to the phasing used in WotLK as the first telephone with the new I-Phone. Those who said, well Blizzard didn't change "the game", well they don't follow up on the used techniques... In TBC they made a complete 3D world (no longer gates to pass through a zone). Complete calculated 3D worlds to fly over. No wonder everyone who played AoC or War said they had this "imprisoned feeling". These products still used the old 2D/3D bordered world edges. Now in WotLK Blizzard added phasing in a big way. Let everyone just explore it their way. While it's only being used in the longer questlines (and sometimes being accompanied with cinematics), it shows what is coming to us in the future. And believe me the professional future of MMO's lay in the hands of Blizzard. No doubt about it after seeing this applied in WotLK. Crazy. Just plain crazy and a first in the MMORPG field, because these world changes are happening in full adventure lines (not at a beginning or intro or not in between a temporarely shifting of a quest). Crazy talk about new MMO's overhere, while Blizzard just applies it in their expansion. The big compliments go to a company that actually DO things instead of publishing thin air hype.
This pretty much sums up ALL the arguments against MMOs that the diehard MMO haters have been complaining about for years. With WOTLK the "your actions have NO impact on the world" complaint no longer applies. YES your actions actually do CHANGE the game. If you NEVER do quests in Stormpeaks and Icecrown you WILL NOT access that content. Until YOU decide to act locations will remain unavailable to you and mobs will remain your enemy. Blizzard's use of on-the-fly instanced content in WOTLK is absolutely brilliant and the best thing about the expansion.
First off, when they came out with BC, they moved away from developing thier game using 3d studios max. This was stated in on of thier first interviews after BC launched that the sole reason you could not fly in BC was because of the Old World design using 3d studios. This was more noticable when flying into Stormwind on the flight path. Secondly phasing was introduced long before BC when Blizzard came up with the AQ event. It pretty much spawned from that idea. Phasing really is not that innovative either. They just made content only accesible by completing certain goals.
With WOTLK the "your actions have NO impact on the world" complaint no longer applies. YES your actions actually do CHANGE the game. If you NEVER do quests in Stormpeaks and Icecrown you WILL NOT access that content. Until YOU decide to act locations will remain unavailable to you and mobs will remain your enemy.
Thats the stupidest argument I have ever heard. By the same logic if I never do quests in Goldshire I will not access the content. Until I decide to leave Goldshire then I will never get to Westfall.
Effecting only your client does not count as having impact on the world. An impact on the world will be felt by all, not just whomever has completed X quest line.
Originally posted by strategy And believe me the professional future of MMO's lay in the hands of Blizzard. No doubt about it after seeing this applied in WotLK.
This is when the Fanboi Flag officially became unfurled.
As others have said, phasing isn't a new thing and it won't save mmos.
Phasing is used in LotrO but not very much (just some small things). They usually use instancing instead to lock/unlock story.
So even if Blizzard didnt innovate we can say that it havent been used on that scale as in Wotlk. Nice to see that Blizzard are doing something to evolve atleast...
If WoW = The Beatles and WAR = Led Zeppelin Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
Blizzard probably didn't invent the idea but they used it well and thats all i care about, i don't care where they get things from to add to the game, as long as its fun thats all that matters to me. I"m just wondering why these companies can't seem to copyright their ideas if they somehow created them..or perhaps its just the simple fact that all mmo's copy each others ideas.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand." - Lewis Thomas
Blizzard probably didn't invent the idea but they used it well and thats all i care about, i don't care where they get things from to add to the game, as long as its fun thats all that matters to me. I"m just wondering why these companies can't seem to copyright their ideas if they somehow created them..or perhaps its just the simple fact that all mmo's copy each others ideas.
<< Sigh. CoX had a complete 3D world as far as movement is concerned years before WoW. And this "phasing" is nothing new and exists in other MMOs. LOTRO has been doing similar and I would say more developed things like this since its release.
I can't believe people fall for this Blizzard is innovative crap. Especailly in regards to flying mounts. Give me a break. You can actually fight and fly in CoX. Complete my foot. >>
<edited for grammar>
I don't remember which came out first off-hand, but you can fly in Shadowbane, too. SB had lots of ingenuity but was horrible in too many ways... As for CoX, the character positioning/updating is behind Wow's. Plus - CoX doesn't have vehicles (no mounts, no flying mounts, just trains that you zone into, etc.) So while I love Coh/Cox, WoW is still the first/best in flying mounts. And unfortunately very few other games to this day have given us any flying at all. WAR's helicopter ride made me puke.
The no-zoning (other than into dungeons) thing is cool in TBC, AC1 did that first I think but WoW did it better because it has more than just lots of terrain and a few buildings. And because it has flying rather than just obscene jumping skills.
If you stop and think for a moment, you'd probably realize that it doesn't make any sense for two people to be in the same zone at the same time, and have it not appear the same to those same people. WoW is actually making the game less realistic. I can imagine the conversations now:
You know, when I heard about phasing, this is what I was thinking.
Now, I have no doubt whatsoever phasing is great, makes the game more fun, and all that, and the people who still play WoW are loving. But a lot of people want an MMO where if you change something in the world, it changeas for everyone, not just you (I hate to bring the S word into this but this is actually a pretty-much agreed on concept for sandbox games).
I think it's good though. WoW is the AOL of MMOs - recruits noobs by the bucketfulls and gives them a game to play the mainstream won't give them a ration of shit for, and ex-WoW players feed the rest of the MMO market.
Eventually, like AOL, they'll run out of noobs and their business model will implode, but that day's a ways off still.
Yeah because we should all go to the super awesome amazing sandbox game thats out. Namely.....
it's..........
oh wait!.........no....
Hmmmm..........
Oh yeah! it doesn't exist.
The thing about WoW is the game is a timeline, which idiots still fail to grasp. When you advance forward you are moving forward in time, everything you did in the past is in the past. Right now even though you can go kill ony do MC, fight illidan, if you are in wotlk zones, they are "dead" when it comes to lore.
Phasing is a great feature, and it does change the way you feel about it, if you've done the wrath gate event you'll see phasing in it's entire awesomeness.
PEople keep saying it brings in the newbs.
I'll say it's far better to play with newbs, than to play with the sandbox geeks and freaks.
FYI I am not paid by blizzard to post "WoW, it's amazing kind of posts" like Azrile, Bodypass or Strategy so I will not be posting anything here
Hope you got the message...
----------------------------- Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
Deep within WotLK lays a wonderfull technique that's called "Phasing". Oh, Blizzard mentioned it a few times, but hey they let the players discover things. Within WotLK is indeed the new MMORPG revolution. Your world is no longer the same as ... my world in Wow 2009. And for those who think they saw phasing at work in the Sunwell patch (2.4), let me say that compares to the phasing used in WotLK as the first telephone with the new I-Phone. Those who said, well Blizzard didn't change "the game", well they don't follow up on the used techniques... In TBC they made a complete 3D world (no longer gates to pass through a zone). Complete calculated 3D worlds to fly over. No wonder everyone who played AoC or War said they had this "imprisoned feeling". These products still used the old 2D/3D bordered world edges. Now in WotLK Blizzard added phasing in a big way. Let everyone just explore it their way. While it's only being used in the longer questlines (and sometimes being accompanied with cinematics), it shows what is coming to us in the future. And believe me the professional future of MMO's lay in the hands of Blizzard. No doubt about it after seeing this applied in WotLK. Crazy. Just plain crazy and a first in the MMORPG field, because these world changes are happening in full adventure lines (not at a beginning or intro or not in between a temporarely shifting of a quest). Crazy talk about new MMO's overhere, while Blizzard just applies it in their expansion. The big compliments go to a company that actually DO things instead of publishing thin air hype.
Seeing your zealotry, I'm guessing it won't matter to you that LotRO had "phasing" of this kind when it first came out.
You first ran into it doing a very early epic quest line in Archet. The town looked completely different when you completed the quest. Some of the NPCs were gone. Certain new quests were available. I admit it was quite a "cool" idea that never seemed to get the implementation I would have like to have seen.
Originally posted by strategy Here it is being used to change a complete zone. - IN game - depending on the questline and middle in the game. Meaning stories will be uncovered to individual players with complete land reshaping and questgivers.
A complete zone? Where? I've seen them add buildings and NPCs and even change the color of the terrain or add fire effects and such, but hardly anything as significant as changing the terrain, and especially not the entire zone.
I won't do spoilers: I'll give a few hints: Dragonblight. And do please continue the questlines because the follow ups go on.
At no point does phasing change the "complete zone" as you seem to imply. Not even close.
O yes it does. And upon changing it, it even changes the world and its heroes...for only the characters that do certain questlines. If you mean the "whole complete zone". No
But that is not even a discussion here/ The zones change and the world to that character changed with a definate character.
A first in MMORPG's.
No, it's NOT a first in MMORPGs... and we've circled right back around to where you started this pointless argument in the first place.
Blizzard is not the first company to use phasing, and they aren't even using it to its full capabilities.
I know its hard to swallow with all the Wow hate around here. But you are plain wrong.
It IS a first in MMO land . The world you quest in changed in completing some adventures. The story line even changed IN game in doing these quests and it is a very first,
The landscape changes according to what you do (or not do) and another player not doing some adventures sees ANOTHER part of zones.
So you may say 10.000 time no, I don't care. I know MILLIONS of players will see it now and in the future and act accordingly when a new MMORPG will come along. Just like they didn't like the closed up worlds of recently launched MMO's, they will refer to the 3D rendering overfly worlds in TBC.
I say Blizzard used this phasing technique (they even invented the name) and it's a first to influence a fantasy world and individual questing on line.
The OP has very wrong idea of how this technology work. The way Blizzard implemented this is nothing new. They use a very old technique.
You thought that they change the world, change the landscape but the truth is what they change is very minor.
Blizzard use a technique call dynamic terrain loading using a very good resource streaming system. This technique is nothing new, Asheron's Call have done it way before Blizzard did. Your game client does not load the whole world when you log in. They only load a relatively small area around you. Base on your vector movement, the system pre-load art assets into memory.
What they did for "phasing" is very simple. A very small area was marked special on the map. When your character move close to this area, the server know this by computing your movement vector and if you have certain quest flag completed they will load different art assets into memory.
These art assets are not that many, small things like tree, small objects, you can actually tell if you look closely to the environment. They look different from the large structure.
The large structure and landscape do not change. The world does not change, only very small area change slightly. You can actually see this for your self. Take a flight from Dalaran to Wrath Gate. Set your view distance to very far. You can see all NPC, everything looks very normal in Warth gate until you reach a relatively close distance than bam, those disappear and replace by the slightly different version you see.
Because Blizzard only apply phasing to a very small area they actually create a lot of problems, paradoxes. For example, after the Warth gate quest, you can see clearly that Alexstrasza exists at 2 separate places at the same time. Blizzard know this very well, but they cannot fix it because in their world you have 2 time-lines co-exist. Call it a "space-time continueum" if you will.
Originally posted by ssstupido About me not wanting the world to change, you are completely wrong. i wish that MMO worlds would change, but on a global scale, not instanced for a single player. Completely agree like the example someone put above me. on GW you didnt see any vendors until you completed a certain mission. THAT SUCKS!!!! what are we? living on parallel worlds inside already parallel servers? if that means inmersion to you... to me inmersion is when my acts affect the whole world i am playing, not only my watered down copy of it. Must be crazy to put GW as an example of inmersion FOR A MMORPG. worlds changin is what horizons did (i think it was horizons, but it could be ryzom). Players had to work together to discover new territories that were later added to the game. Also, if i recall right, new races were added also when players discoverd them. and those changes were made for every player, not just a single hero. sssssshhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! shut up!!!!! wow fanboys do not like to know that a certain game did something better and before world shaping is what SWG had with player made towns. Towns that were there for everybody, not just those that built the city. Or EVE Online conquerable regions and player made settlements. I think that EVE conquerable regions falls a little short. yes, you can conquer regions, get sovereignity and even build outposts. but those outposts can not be destroyed. Gates can not be destroyed or disabled either. I wish EVE would go further on with player influencing the universe. What WoW has done is to close even more the already narrow gap between single player games like Oblivion and Online Worlds. To me, that is a big step on the wrong direction. QFT. I feel ashamed to see so many fanboys praise this awful feature. If this becomes a trend, we will not have any more online worlds (well, right now we dont have many left)
Comments
This pretty much sums up ALL the arguments against MMOs that the diehard MMO haters have been complaining about for years. With WOTLK the "your actions have NO impact on the world" complaint no longer applies. YES your actions actually do CHANGE the game. If you NEVER do quests in Stormpeaks and Icecrown you WILL NOT access that content. Until YOU decide to act locations will remain unavailable to you and mobs will remain your enemy. Blizzard's use of on-the-fly instanced content in WOTLK is absolutely brilliant and the best thing about the expansion.
First off, when they came out with BC, they moved away from developing thier game using 3d studios max. This was stated in on of thier first interviews after BC launched that the sole reason you could not fly in BC was because of the Old World design using 3d studios. This was more noticable when flying into Stormwind on the flight path. Secondly phasing was introduced long before BC when Blizzard came up with the AQ event. It pretty much spawned from that idea. Phasing really is not that innovative either. They just made content only accesible by completing certain goals.
Thats the stupidest argument I have ever heard. By the same logic if I never do quests in Goldshire I will not access the content. Until I decide to leave Goldshire then I will never get to Westfall.
Effecting only your client does not count as having impact on the world. An impact on the world will be felt by all, not just whomever has completed X quest line.
This is when the Fanboi Flag officially became unfurled.
As others have said, phasing isn't a new thing and it won't save mmos.
Phasing is used in LotrO but not very much (just some small things). They usually use instancing instead to lock/unlock story.
So even if Blizzard didnt innovate we can say that it havent been used on that scale as in Wotlk. Nice to see that Blizzard are doing something to evolve atleast...
If WoW = The Beatles
and WAR = Led Zeppelin
Then LotrO = Pink Floyd
Blizzard probably didn't invent the idea but they used it well and thats all i care about, i don't care where they get things from to add to the game, as long as its fun thats all that matters to me. I"m just wondering why these companies can't seem to copyright their ideas if they somehow created them..or perhaps its just the simple fact that all mmo's copy each others ideas.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas
if it were legal to believe me they would.
<< Sigh. CoX had a complete 3D world as far as movement is concerned years before WoW. And this "phasing" is nothing new and exists in other MMOs. LOTRO has been doing similar and I would say more developed things like this since its release.
I can't believe people fall for this Blizzard is innovative crap. Especailly in regards to flying mounts. Give me a break. You can actually fight and fly in CoX. Complete my foot. >>
<edited for grammar>
I don't remember which came out first off-hand, but you can fly in Shadowbane, too. SB had lots of ingenuity but was horrible in too many ways... As for CoX, the character positioning/updating is behind Wow's. Plus - CoX doesn't have vehicles (no mounts, no flying mounts, just trains that you zone into, etc.) So while I love Coh/Cox, WoW is still the first/best in flying mounts. And unfortunately very few other games to this day have given us any flying at all. WAR's helicopter ride made me puke.
The no-zoning (other than into dungeons) thing is cool in TBC, AC1 did that first I think but WoW did it better because it has more than just lots of terrain and a few buildings. And because it has flying rather than just obscene jumping skills.
You know, when I heard about phasing, this is what I was thinking.
Now, I have no doubt whatsoever phasing is great, makes the game more fun, and all that, and the people who still play WoW are loving. But a lot of people want an MMO where if you change something in the world, it changeas for everyone, not just you (I hate to bring the S word into this but this is actually a pretty-much agreed on concept for sandbox games).
I think it's good though. WoW is the AOL of MMOs - recruits noobs by the bucketfulls and gives them a game to play the mainstream won't give them a ration of shit for, and ex-WoW players feed the rest of the MMO market.
Eventually, like AOL, they'll run out of noobs and their business model will implode, but that day's a ways off still.
Yeah because we should all go to the super awesome amazing sandbox game thats out. Namely.....
it's..........
oh wait!.........no....
Hmmmm..........
Oh yeah! it doesn't exist.
The thing about WoW is the game is a timeline, which idiots still fail to grasp. When you advance forward you are moving forward in time, everything you did in the past is in the past. Right now even though you can go kill ony do MC, fight illidan, if you are in wotlk zones, they are "dead" when it comes to lore.
Phasing is a great feature, and it does change the way you feel about it, if you've done the wrath gate event you'll see phasing in it's entire awesomeness.
PEople keep saying it brings in the newbs.
I'll say it's far better to play with newbs, than to play with the sandbox geeks and freaks.
FYI I am not paid by blizzard to post "WoW, it's amazing kind of posts" like Azrile, Bodypass or Strategy so I will not be posting anything here
Hope you got the message...
-----------------------------
Osbourne Cox: You are the guy from the gym.
Ted Treffon: I don't represent Hardbodies.
Osbourne Cox: I know very well what you represent. You represent the idiocy of today.
Ted Treffon: No, I don't represent that either.
Osbourne Cox: You are part of a league of morons. Oh, yes. You see you're one of the morons I've been fighting my whole life. But guess what. Today, I win.
Seeing your zealotry, I'm guessing it won't matter to you that LotRO had "phasing" of this kind when it first came out.
You first ran into it doing a very early epic quest line in Archet. The town looked completely different when you completed the quest. Some of the NPCs were gone. Certain new quests were available. I admit it was quite a "cool" idea that never seemed to get the implementation I would have like to have seen.
A complete zone? Where? I've seen them add buildings and NPCs and even change the color of the terrain or add fire effects and such, but hardly anything as significant as changing the terrain, and especially not the entire zone.
I won't do spoilers: I'll give a few hints: Dragonblight. And do please continue the questlines because the follow ups go on.
At no point does phasing change the "complete zone" as you seem to imply. Not even close.
O yes it does. And upon changing it, it even changes the world and its heroes...for only the characters that do certain questlines. If you mean the "whole complete zone". No
But that is not even a discussion here/ The zones change and the world to that character changed with a definate character.
A first in MMORPG's.
No, it's NOT a first in MMORPGs... and we've circled right back around to where you started this pointless argument in the first place.
Blizzard is not the first company to use phasing, and they aren't even using it to its full capabilities.
I know its hard to swallow with all the Wow hate around here. But you are plain wrong.
It IS a first in MMO land . The world you quest in changed in completing some adventures. The story line even changed IN game in doing these quests and it is a very first,
The landscape changes according to what you do (or not do) and another player not doing some adventures sees ANOTHER part of zones.
So you may say 10.000 time no, I don't care. I know MILLIONS of players will see it now and in the future and act accordingly when a new MMORPG will come along. Just like they didn't like the closed up worlds of recently launched MMO's, they will refer to the 3D rendering overfly worlds in TBC.
I say Blizzard used this phasing technique (they even invented the name) and it's a first to influence a fantasy world and individual questing on line.
The OP has very wrong idea of how this technology work. The way Blizzard implemented this is nothing new. They use a very old technique.
You thought that they change the world, change the landscape but the truth is what they change is very minor.
Blizzard use a technique call dynamic terrain loading using a very good resource streaming system. This technique is nothing new, Asheron's Call have done it way before Blizzard did. Your game client does not load the whole world when you log in. They only load a relatively small area around you. Base on your vector movement, the system pre-load art assets into memory.
What they did for "phasing" is very simple. A very small area was marked special on the map. When your character move close to this area, the server know this by computing your movement vector and if you have certain quest flag completed they will load different art assets into memory.
These art assets are not that many, small things like tree, small objects, you can actually tell if you look closely to the environment. They look different from the large structure.
The large structure and landscape do not change. The world does not change, only very small area change slightly. You can actually see this for your self. Take a flight from Dalaran to Wrath Gate. Set your view distance to very far. You can see all NPC, everything looks very normal in Warth gate until you reach a relatively close distance than bam, those disappear and replace by the slightly different version you see.
Because Blizzard only apply phasing to a very small area they actually create a lot of problems, paradoxes. For example, after the Warth gate quest, you can see clearly that Alexstrasza exists at 2 separate places at the same time. Blizzard know this very well, but they cannot fix it because in their world you have 2 time-lines co-exist. Call it a "space-time continueum" if you will.