Have any of you played Shadowbane? It was my first mmo so while it had some serious problems, I remember it fondly. One thing I liked was how large it was....at least how large it felt to me.
Shadowbane's world seemed large but void. You had some hot spots to grind here and there, but the gameplay required to leave as much room as possible for player driven cities (hence the void). You also had no quests, so it didn't require any 'features' in its world other than rivers, teleport stones, and some high level mobs that drops a rare hat here and there.
If we compare to World of Warcraft's original world, the latest was probably bigger.
Speaking of World of Warcraft, its own world changed a lot. At first, quest zones were extremely spreaded out. You had 1, maybe 2 quest hubs per zone, and you had to run back and forth between 2 or 3 zones when you were questing. You even had a lot of Fedex quests requesting you to venture to the other continent. You also had a lot of zones without any quests for future expansions. In comparison to its new design, Outland and Northrend have multiple quest hubs in each zones with next to no Fedex quests, reducing the overall travel time by a lot. Quests are built in a way that invite you to the next hub once you completed your current quests. The world feels a lot more dense, though zones are more or less of the same size.
Now for Trion, it's good and all to speak of the proper world size, but we don't know their 'treshold of density' they are trying to achieve. We know Rifts are going to spawn with creatures conquering their surrounding. That means they need to create their world with enough room for those rifts to spawn and for battlefields to take place. Though it's hard to know at this stage what's their goal in terms of travel time in between quest hubs, world features, and rifts.
Huge open worlds do make the game feel immersive but it can also be tedious if you have to physically trek throught it everytime (especially if you've seen the area a hundred times). It also sucks to rely on other people as a means of transportation (mage teleport, druid spirit of the wolf [EverQuest]).
Don't get me wrong, I love exploring new areas. But once I've seen it, I've seen it..know what I mean?
Scot Hartsman- "The easiest thing we could have done, literally, is create terrain. We could have created a larger world space than has ever been created in MMOGs and ship it. We can do that. The problem is that that’s not fun, because creating empty space, while creating a feeling of holy crap – this world is gigantic, also creates annoyance in travel time and you end up with a very low density of interesting things to do. To us, it’s about making sure we have enough interesting things to look at, but still make it big enough so you feel that there’s a lot of things left to explore. Somewhere in there is the balance point of where our world is. On top of that, there’s also making sure that there’s interesting dungeons and interesting raid zones and interesting war fronts along the way to tie the story together. To us, it’s about the quality of any given piece of world rather than just flopping down any number of height maps saying, look, we have the biggest world in MMOGs ever. We could do that and we’d probably get some press out of it, but it’s not what we want to do. We’re looking at having a high density of interesting things to do."
I find this comforting... They seem to be aiming for a middle ground when it comes to world size, which I think is the right way to go.
I mean, we all love the idea of humungous worlds in theory I think, but when they are largely empty terrain (VG or DF maybe) whats the point? I am an explorer by nature, and love those easter eggs, but even I can get bored of looking at continous landscapes with no PoI to grab my interest.
I disagree. In my opinion there is no down-side to a huge, massive world and there is actually an up-side for a lot of players.
I for one, loved the huge world of Vanguard. Yes, there were entire zones with no quests, no outposts, even no critters. But the sense of a huge world with places I've never been too created a sense of immersion for me. It was also possible to get lost (seriously lost), it kept people looking in places for new dungeons, new quests etc. And yes, every know and then a lost and ignored part of the world suddenly could become important for a quest or even a small hint from a NPC.
I'm a little concerned about the 'high density' comment in the above statement. I don't want a game on rails that just puts everything I need on a plate in front of me in sequential order. There is no down-side to having a big world with more places to go. I don't want to be queued up in line to kill a critter, get a quest etc. Spread things out, make it immersive.
I've got big hopes for this game. I, like many other Vanguard players, are looking for something to play in this post-apocolyptic MMO world.
I took the following pictures on my flying mount. When you look over that landscape from that altitude your looking at many zones, some dangerous, some have an outpost, some are empty. But the great thing was, every place you can see, you can get to by foot, boat or flying mount. Our guild hall was on that middle island.... you can actually see the tip of the roof and it's probably 4 zones away.
I took the following pictures on my flying mount. When you look over that landscape from that altitude your looking at many zones, some dangerous, some have an outpost, some are empty. But the great thing was, every place you can see, you can get to by foot, boat or flying mount. Our guild hall was on that middle island.... you can actually see the tip of the roof and it's probably 4 zones away.
Remember though, there is no flying mount available. Plus invasions/rifts will most likely be part of that mob density which hinders progressing from one zone to the next.
My impression is there will be few invisible walls but more walls with teeth that will act as barriers. I can almost guarantee however that the game will eventually end up much larger than launch within 6 months of launch, just a hunch!
Edit: Vanguard is a very beautiful game, real shame it hasnt had the investment it deserves
Comments
Shadowbane's world seemed large but void. You had some hot spots to grind here and there, but the gameplay required to leave as much room as possible for player driven cities (hence the void). You also had no quests, so it didn't require any 'features' in its world other than rivers, teleport stones, and some high level mobs that drops a rare hat here and there.
If we compare to World of Warcraft's original world, the latest was probably bigger.
Speaking of World of Warcraft, its own world changed a lot. At first, quest zones were extremely spreaded out. You had 1, maybe 2 quest hubs per zone, and you had to run back and forth between 2 or 3 zones when you were questing. You even had a lot of Fedex quests requesting you to venture to the other continent. You also had a lot of zones without any quests for future expansions. In comparison to its new design, Outland and Northrend have multiple quest hubs in each zones with next to no Fedex quests, reducing the overall travel time by a lot. Quests are built in a way that invite you to the next hub once you completed your current quests. The world feels a lot more dense, though zones are more or less of the same size.
Now for Trion, it's good and all to speak of the proper world size, but we don't know their 'treshold of density' they are trying to achieve. We know Rifts are going to spawn with creatures conquering their surrounding. That means they need to create their world with enough room for those rifts to spawn and for battlefields to take place. Though it's hard to know at this stage what's their goal in terms of travel time in between quest hubs, world features, and rifts.
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Huge open worlds do make the game feel immersive but it can also be tedious if you have to physically trek throught it everytime (especially if you've seen the area a hundred times). It also sucks to rely on other people as a means of transportation (mage teleport, druid spirit of the wolf [EverQuest]).
Don't get me wrong, I love exploring new areas. But once I've seen it, I've seen it..know what I mean?
I disagree. In my opinion there is no down-side to a huge, massive world and there is actually an up-side for a lot of players.
I for one, loved the huge world of Vanguard. Yes, there were entire zones with no quests, no outposts, even no critters. But the sense of a huge world with places I've never been too created a sense of immersion for me. It was also possible to get lost (seriously lost), it kept people looking in places for new dungeons, new quests etc. And yes, every know and then a lost and ignored part of the world suddenly could become important for a quest or even a small hint from a NPC.
I'm a little concerned about the 'high density' comment in the above statement. I don't want a game on rails that just puts everything I need on a plate in front of me in sequential order. There is no down-side to having a big world with more places to go. I don't want to be queued up in line to kill a critter, get a quest etc. Spread things out, make it immersive.
I've got big hopes for this game. I, like many other Vanguard players, are looking for something to play in this post-apocolyptic MMO world.
I took the following pictures on my flying mount. When you look over that landscape from that altitude your looking at many zones, some dangerous, some have an outpost, some are empty. But the great thing was, every place you can see, you can get to by foot, boat or flying mount. Our guild hall was on that middle island.... you can actually see the tip of the roof and it's probably 4 zones away.
Remember though, there is no flying mount available. Plus invasions/rifts will most likely be part of that mob density which hinders progressing from one zone to the next.
My impression is there will be few invisible walls but more walls with teeth that will act as barriers. I can almost guarantee however that the game will eventually end up much larger than launch within 6 months of launch, just a hunch!
Edit: Vanguard is a very beautiful game, real shame it hasnt had the investment it deserves