Vanguard May Beta Newsletter

[Xaen]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

Zoning doesn't help EQ2 much.

I agree with you that zoning constantly does seem to slow the game down more and more. A bug that needs to be squashed still.

But as for the game world itself, I still think having zones let the developers concentrate on a specific area more and put in more detail, and allows them to vary each area as needed. WoW did some nice transitions, but overall I felt all the little details and such that I saw in EQ and EQ2 were still missing from the game world.

And im still pissed that I couldn't climb the mountains like I could in the beta.

[Olio]

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

[Rulan]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

It would have been far better, given the lack of interest across the board in this beta, to have just said "send us what you have and we will publish the best". Being so nit-picky, with so many requirements means they will barely get a trickle of SS's submitted.

Can you imagine what the SS forums on FOH would look like if that was the requirements for posting them was ?

When you ask people to help, you don't ask them to bend over backwards and set their heads on fire to help you.

ya cause that's not a waste of time