Re: PCGamer article: Vanguard's WoWization is a fact


Frank E wrote:
On 19 Jul 2006 06:32:28 -0700, "Wolfing" <wolfing1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Frank E wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2006 18:45:22 -0400, Briarroot <woodsyl@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
That never bothered me a bit because I was *listening* to what was
going on around me. I found meditation while staring at my spell book
to be exciting, different and essential. I was never bored.

Yeah, but you're strange. :p
Make it two strange people now :)
It's not like I was burning my mana just so I could have fun
meditating, but it was something that added to the immersion in the
world. Just like many people complained about money having weight, and
that it was not 'fun' to have to stop fighting to do a 'bank run'.
Guess what, I liked that too. Or in SWG, the wound system that forced
you to go to a cantina to rest every once in a while, I liked that too.
Basically, I like things that make me think about the game as a
different world instead of just a battle simulator.

I actually agree with most of that statement. I just never felt that
medding fell into that category. It was never immersive for me, just
damn annoying.

You also don't get many of the time wasting bugs that tend to piss of
customers. Boats in EQ were fine, 3 hour boat trips because you kept
crashing when you zoned into a port wasn't. Corpse runs usually
weren't a big problem, 10 hour corpse runs because Plane of Fear was
bugged and nobody could break in to do a corpse recovery was a
problem....

Well but that's not a problem of a game's design, more of the
implementation.

The two tend to go hand-in-hand though. There will always be bugs, but
if you make it easier for the player to recover from mistakes, it's
easier for players to get past a buggy implementation.

That this reflects
the general trend in PC gaming is clear, but I wish they would just
let Blizzard have those players and concentrate on finding another
audience altogether.

I'd question how much of WoW's success is due to the 'dumbing down'
aspect. I'm sure that's part of it but there are other things that WoW
got right.
- They made a game that wasn't a hardware hog, that alone does a lot
to increase your potential customer base.

Not sure this really mattered. Most MMORPGs can be played in old
computers.

I never played EQ2 but always heard that it was a resource hog.
Nah, if you turn graphics down you can play it pretty much in any
computer, of course it'd look like shit with no bump mapping, no
shadows, low polygons, spell effects would have like 3 particles, etc.
but it'd be playable. People complained that, in order to see graphics
as they appeared in advertisements, they'd need a super fast computer
with all graphics options on.
The thing with WoW is that it looked beautiful even on low end
computers, while EQ2 didn't look beautiful even in high end computers.
It looked realistic... but not beautiful. This is more important than
you may think, for example, when I played EQ2 my guild decided to start
in evil Freeport. I started playing there, but after a while, I just
couldn't stand the gloomy, dark, decaying environment of the city.
It's all in the art and style. I almost quit the game right there, but
then decided to create a new character in Qeynos and the experience was
so much different (and better) that I stayed for some 3 or 4 more
months.

.

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