Re: Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures breaks all the current storage-requirement records for PC games......

On Apr 28, 5:29 pm, Nostromo <nos...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thus spake TheSmokingGnu <anonymityisavir...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Mon, 28 Apr
2008 17:52:37 GMT, Anno Domini:



CoinSpin wrote:
John Lewis wrote:
Blizzard have been very cunning with Wow. They have concentrated their
graphics glitz in the areas that matter - the visible characters and
kept the polygon count low elsewhere. Hence, modest system
requirements while still looking great and the huge number of players.

I'm having flashbacks to Auto Assault... It had such extreme system
requirements
<snip>

Alright, let's get off the "bash AoC" train for just one moment.

The system requirements are by no means "extreme"; the minimum is a
computer about 3 years old, and the recommended is a very reasonable
system that could have been built in the last two years.

Yes, but how will my 'state of the art' rig from 3 yrs ago actually run this
beast of a game? Not very well I'm willing to bet.

The comments about WoW are spot on, similar to GW - I can run these on a
crappy 5 yr old work laptop (& quite playably I might add), whereas even
games like CoX which are several years old, barely chug along. Is AoC going
to reach any of the mobility market or just the ultra l33t <1% notebook
owners?

At what point are developers "allowed" to cease supporting heavily
outdated hardware? I mean, you do realize that separate render paths
have to be created for SM1.4, SM2.0, SM2.0b, SM3.0 AND SM4.0 cards,
right? Should they be required to quintuple development time to appease
the Usenet curmudgeons? How far back into the annals of history must
support extend to be considered munificent? Should everyone have a
backup text MUD version, in case of errant 80486 users? :P

I see you have a nice shiny new (recent) box there on your shoulder TSG ;-p

And you're missing the entire point...who gives a flying fornication about
PS2.0 or 3.0 or AA this or AF that? Does it look *reasonably* _good_? Is it
*playable* & is their gameplay top notch? So long as devs continue to push
the h/ware envelope (just so they can line their pockets & those of the
likes of Intel/NVidia & M$ with contra deals), they will alienate 80%+ of
their target audience. Only truly casual gamers with more money than brains
who don't care about what they get so long as their shiny new toy sparkles
will continue to fall for this kind of deception. We don't need a new PC
every 2 years - technology ain't evolving *that* quick!

(And for that matter, people don't play WoW because it's pretty; your
hands are made up of a grand total of 6 polygons, dearest. They play
because it's a massive time sink in their vacuous non-existences.)

So just like every other mmo out there once the novelty wears off? Mkay.

The Steam Hardware Survey (boo! hiss! I get from the peanut gallery :D)
comprises nearly 1.6 million unique computers, and the most common
resolution played at, at nearly 40% of all users, is 1280x960, followed
closely by, you guessed it, 1024x768 (32%). In this case, catering your
requirements to those resolutions is a very smart business move; right
around 20% of users had anything higher, and about 18% of that is
widescreens beyond 1280. If you want to push more than a million and a
half pixels every frame, you had better already be prepared to bring the
graphical prowess.

/AND/, 23.5GB is nothing, given how cheap storage is today. Heck, you
can get old-fogey PATA IDE 160GB hard drives for $45, delivered to your
door from Newegg. That's 28 cents per gig, get over yourselves. :)

Aha, and you think every one of those PCs can run bleeding edge s/ware
tricked out to the max? I run Windows in 1280x1024, but I'm lucky to get
20fps from most recent 3D games on my rig. Whooooooosh!!! ;-p

TheSmokingGnu

PS: 750GB for $150, great googly-boogly. 20 cents a gig.

PPS: Cross-posting sluts. It's an RPG!

He, he.

--
Nostromo

I think the problem with MMOs is that they have to endure the pass of
time. Ideally, those games are meant to be played 3-5 years from now,
hopefully still looking decent by that time standard. Of course, it
also depends on the theme and the direction. WoW is cartoony looking
so it doesn't need it, but a game like Age of Conan can't have that
luxury. That world is deadly, bloody, menacing, and cartoony graphics
just won't work there.
And really, just go to your local computer store and buy a 500GB disk
for like $60 or something, I just bought a 750GB for like $99 if I
remember correctly (so I can install AoC's 30GB and still have 720GB
left for useful stuff, like porn :)
.