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Originally Posted by Utnayan Thanks for the in-depth explanation.
I guess that leaves the question then, why did developers move away from zones? This is going to be subjective as hell, but I didn't mind zoning, and I would gladly trade zoning for huge graphical performance - especially on raids. |
Zones are about server space more than graphics. Even without zones your world will be fairly predictable in terms of visibility. Zones were a way to dice a 2000 player server up into little 200 player servers so that you could stick the world on multiple machines. Taking the easy way out on graphics was a side effect.
The primary limiter in these games in terms of graphics is the other players. Everyone wants to look like a unique and beautiful snowflake so you end up having to set aside lots of resources to handle player models, armors, and their textures. The players are also more polygon dense than the terrain. Consider for example that the zone in EQ with the worst performance was the bazaar. You either get to pick beautiful graphics with 20 people raids or simpler graphics with 200 people battles.
Olio