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Wildstar has instanced zones. How can it be called a MMORPG?
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Ok.. a last time, just to clarify a few things.. just for the sake of it.
1. First of all.. does it really matter if one game is a MMO or not?
2. What is a MMO and what is not depends only how you define MMO. And there is no set in stone definition for MMOs.
However
3. If you use the definition from wikipedia. And noone really says that this defintion is the one and only true defintion. But just assuming we use that definition
A MMO have to have
- massive players, which play together in comparsion to less players in multiplayer games.
- a persistent online world.
Now you could argue how many players are massive, or to what degree a online world have to be persistent to be called a persistent online world. But just taking this definition:
- GW1 is then not a MMO, because it does not have a persistent online world, and because it is not really massive in players playing together
- Wildstar and AoC are hardly to call MMO, depending on how you define persistent online world.
With other words.. be careful to call other people stupid, just because you assume something, which may not be true either. It just makes you looking stupid... like really really dumb.
But bottom line.. noone cares what a MMO is, or how it is defined, and it does not matter if one game is a MMO or not.
Edit: By the way. With your definition "MMORPG = Massive multiplayer online Role playing game.. aka Alot of people online at the same time" Online Poker like PokerStars would be a MMORPG. Ok.. right? o.O
It's been some time since I played AC but I cant remember those Portal Storms. I played on Morningthaw and Dartide. The first place I would think someone encountered anything like you describe would have been Subway (central trade area with many players spaming to sell their goods before they introduced the Marketplace area). But neither there nor in Fort Teth or the other city that had high buy rates and was kind of a hub did I ever encounter anything like that.
It does have zoned dungeons meaning you have to use a portal to enter dungeons but other than that there is no instance. We held some (quest) dungeons on DT (pvp server) for a while and there was definitly no instancing. But as someone else mentioned Ac had not as many players as todays AAA MMORPGs, only about 1-3k players per server on prime time so that might be a factor. Also the map was huge so people spread out and one zone server didnt need to handle that many players. Not sure how many people are on at the same time and in the same zone nowadays.
edit: That was 15 years ago so by now I would hope servers could easily handle 10k players. And later that year people can run their own AC server so it might nice to see what you can do with the old code. If someone is interested you can google the server specs for the official servers. Afaik the gflops of a modern (gaming) PC are enough to run it given you have enough ram aso.
Um... Wow actually has HAD to instance off stuff when it came to large numbers being gathered in one area, particularly in combat. THe game itself is actually relatively small in terms of its server size in what number of players it holds. It even has areas phased out which aid in this a lot. If you played during TBC launch, you can easily see why having everything on one single world can end horribly.
Wildstar has channels, though its quite limited. Its very rare outside overly populated zones to see people instanced off from one another, minus perhaps the main capital city. Its not THEIR fault, its a limitation of tech that for the most part is on the user's side. Unless you have an MMo that shuns away graphics, its not going to be able to handle that many players on a persons local computer. Even if you did, the amount of stuff going on in one place would easily destroy a server and make gameplay extremely difficult.
Vanguard and Rift, Darkfall, has no instanced zones. So what you say has no Point at all. for exempel vanguard is 7 years old and have no instances att all, not even dungeon instances. and have one of bigest game Worlds ever kreated.
x1muft.png
^^
completely agree with this one.
Just played some Just cause 2 mmo, and later today ill give team fortress 2 a shot. so many mmos to chose from. so many players online. so many servers.
cant wait for gta V mmo to come to pc too.
also i loved playing super mario mmo with friends on snes. good times
Yet again another example of instancing having no negative effect on gameplay (ESO & GW2). Never played WoW but that could also be instanced and wouldn't impact the gameplay in a negative way.
All I can see is people claiming it ruins immersion. Only negative thing is if the population is to small, but you can just merge instances like they do with servers.
IMO complaining about instancing is like complaining about multiple servers. (I know multiple servers have different rule sets, however we aren't discussing that).
Get a better PC and you wont have to wait to load. My Eight Core makes loading take seconds.
WildStar only has loading screens when traveling to another continent or to/from off world. The only time that a zone will have channels is when the population reaches a point where performance/gameplay would be compromised. The vast majority would never even notice. The OP is just trying to stir the pot.
You're correct. GW1 is not an MMO, and was never defined as one even by the developers. Main reason for that is because of the lack of persistent world. While you have town hubs where you can interact and chat with other players, the world itself where you go out and play through the content is completely separate. Every time you leave town a new private instance is created for just you and your party with no interaction with the rest of the players. If youre playing solo, everything you do exists for you and only you, nobody else will ever enter that same instance.
In comparison with games like Wildstar, you may have several different instances of a particular zone due to the number of players in the zone, but even if you as an individual log out and leave the zone it is still there and being played by others. The game does not create a separate instance of the zone for every individual player (or party) whenever they load in.
Nah, your reasoning/comprehension is just very rigid and narrow minded. Besides technical determination of instance, there is a another standpoint of the term, the level of design and purpose.
In terms of MMOs, persistance is rather a design solution rather then technical implication.
Instancing whole server, aka "megaserver" tech, is no different from having multiple, separate servers.
If your reasoning was true, only games with single server and 100% free of instances could be considered an MMO, which is rigid and narrow minded.
However, it does not matter anyway... Market determines what is an MMO regardless.
Seeing that you completely miss the point of instanced zones I will explain them to you. By having Instanced Zones like in Star Wars the Old Republic and Age of Conan you limited the lag and stress placed on Servers. By capping out the number of people allowed in an Instanced Server you allow the players on the lower end of the games System Requirements to play the same game as those who are at the higher end of the System Requirements. You might hate the idea but for the Game Developers is the best way to go.
"Possibly we humans can exist without actually having to fight. But many of us have chosen to fight. For what reason? To protect something? Protect what? Ourselves? The future? If we kill people to protect ourselves and this future, then what sort of future is it, and what will we have become? There is no future for those who have died. And what of those who did the killing? Is happiness to be found in a future that is grasped with blood stained hands? Is that the truth?"
It's pretty impressive that a thread that started with "Wildstar" got so many pages before someone that actually played it posted.
Yep. After the start zones the continents are persistant and load screen free just like Wow/Rift.
(((eye roll))) Its not lazy its for the community. WoW before the changes of late had a population per server of about 4-6k. Getting teams was sometimes heard because of the low population. They did some things to try and fix this like cross server Qs for dungeons. Still often areas seems like empty nothing space as few people were level alts. New players come along and cant find teams to do content.
Now WoW takes players from all servers and spawns shards of the area. When in the Barrens its full of players from every server and new players can find team mates. But you cant make friends that way very easy. WS went the other rout. There servers hold vastly larger groups of players. I have heard its somewhere 10K +. When a areas is full it seamless adds a new one, so the map is almost always full of players. Switching between them to play with friends is easy. The world is open and seamless. No game is without phasing (like WoW or Shards like WS) now days. Games like UO and EQ1 are from a day when 500k players where about as big as a game got. Having 100k players online at the same time was a huge deal. MMOs are dealing with populations larger then what old games delt with so things are done different.
You are confusing some terms here, let me help you out.
It's called Channeling, not instancing.
Many games have channeling now, it doesn't make the game 'not an mmo'. If you were around when UO and Diablo were the only options, we debated day and night if Diablo was an MMO or not. Today, we almost all agree that Diablo fits into the genre. So I have no idea how you can say channeling is in ANY WAY negative enough to remove the moniker 'mmo'.
People who complain about channeling have never had to sit and wait for a camp to kill mobs for hours.
Wildstar did this due to the massive amount of players in the same zone. Do you remember when WoW Burning Crusade came out and you couldn't find that mob you needed? And even if you did, it was a race to tag it first?
There are pros and cons to it, but being unable to do a quest because you're a melee fighting to tag a mob against a half dozen ranged classes is not enjoyable either. Granted, they have shared rewards in Wildstar so you don't have to be the first to hit to get all the loot, but you DO get a diminished reward if someone helps you.
Just try to think about why a company would do this.
I can fly higher than an aeroplane.
And I have the voice of a thousand hurricanes.
Hurt - Wars
says you ...
Common usage from industry and review sites (and even the MMO list here) disagree. Even LoL, WoT, DDO, and games without public zones or persistent worlds are considered MMOs.
Guess who I am going to listen to: the random dude on the internet who is unhappy, or the common usage from almost all gaming websites.
WoW does instance content. Those zone divisions aren't there for decoration. That mountain is there so when you are looking at dinosaurs, the people on the other side don't have to render them or even know they exist. The people who are at different stages of content in many areas since Wrath cannot see each other. What is that if not instancing?
UO, the game that literally got the term coined had instances and they weren't very smooth either. You could run mobs up against the walls of them and watch them stand there while you stood just across the line.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
While I understand your sentiment narius, I have to disagree. The site here is inconsistent with its own definition.
It includes MMOFPSs such as Planetside and Face of Mankind, but neglects to mention Battlefield 4. BF4 has progression, unlockable equipment, things that can be earned. It pits more players against one another at the same time then LoL. If you include an FPS MMO and a MOBA such as LoL, why isn't Battlefield 4 included then? What about Call of Duty? Titanfall? What about psuedo-gambling websites? Thousands log in every day to "role-play" a gambler at the poker table. There is no persistent world, and players are matched randomly (just as LoL), but those aren't included, either. Hell, Mass Effect 4 is listed in the website's gamelist.
Just because this website includes such games, it doesn't make MMORPG.com's definition correct or complete. It also doesn't qualify games such as LoL as MMORPG's in the purest sense. This site, for all its boons, maintains a horribly inconsistent view on what qualifies to appear here and what doesn't.
I think you are confusing server/zone boundaries with instances. An instance is a copy of a zone or area. While in a broad sense, one could possibly say servers are instances of the game world, that's not really how the term is used. It is used to refer to copies of a zone, dungeon or other subset of the game world. WOW's battlegrounds are an example of instances.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Instances is the only solution to the ever growing size of the servers...
On top of that, also WoW addapted the technollogy in its current state, because it is the only answer possible to keep lower level zones atleast a little populated...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)