Originally posted by BillMurphy

It's not really "instanced".  It's a HUGE freaking world.  But you do have to "zone" to go from one map to the next.  

how about that loading time between those zones??......2 seconds, 5 seconds, 30 seconds, 2hours? how is that....in SWTOR you dont even feel most zoning, you just walk in and BAM.....thats it.

If i have to wait 2 minutes between zones i would get bored realy fast tough.

The good:  Beautifully designed cities.

The bad:  Horrid overuse of partical effects in the gaming world.  Click to target interface.

"in SWTOR you dont even feel most zoning, you just walk in and BAM.....thats it."

In ToR you had to wait nearly 60 seconds in some of the bigger zones and I have a very fast pc with extremely fast internet.  

Can't comment too much other than to say this has grabbed my attention/// prorbaly play this till archeage

I know you have to find some bads but let's be honest, your bads are not of comparable quality.

5) Not being able to play in the Asura area is a "closed Beta limitation". Open beta will still come.

4) Also, teleport is only good. What's the point of traveling in a game if you have seen it already for a few times? It's a waste of time and players don't like it. Arenanet has done its homework. Besides, like you say it is a good game to play different characters, so this makes my point even stronger.

3) What do you expect, fast travel without loading? Even airplanes take time to land ;).

2) I'm not playing World of Tradeskills, I'm playing a storyline. Crafting is actually quite bad in an rpg, it doesn't belong there in a vast environment (does a hero craft much of its own stuff?  Not at all.). Crafting somehow got assumed to be important but it really isn't.

1) Yeah well, that explains your flawed bads :D.

Originally posted by Powermike

 

2) I'm not playing World of Tradeskills, I'm playing a storyline. Crafting is actually quite bad in an rpg, it doesn't belong there in a vast environment (does a hero craft much of its own stuff?  Not at all.). Crafting somehow got assumed to be important but it really isn't.

 

  Wow, really? Ok you might want to reconsider what an immersive game world is all about. A vibrant market and crafting system are indeed a part of that. Crafting, shop and home ownership, guilds, guild buildings, systems that support all those are indeed important. They are not important to you, doesn't mean squat and your assumptiion that they aren't important is a flawed one.  Quite bad? Ouch, your whole statement boggles my mind. Words fail me really on how I can break down your statement.

 I want to say that maybe you are the one playing the wrong genre of gaming, but even that is too simple of a statement. Ah well, I can just hope that your mind set doesn't become the majority mindset on what makes a good mmo-rpg. To many bad tweaks have come down the pipe line in the last few years from players who should be playing "other" genre of gaming that have effected the mmo-rpg genre badly.

How was combat, and specifically targetting?

Does tab-targetting do a blind three-sixty round robin, or does it do something more intuitive to the human animal like the frontal conal view prioritized by distance?

Thanks for the article. :)

Originally posted by chilliz

Just great more zones, and numbered zones, and jumping and seeignl oad screens.  This is what was awful about GW1, bloody destoyed AOC, and now this so called next gen mmo has to have  zoned copys of areas.  While GW2 does look absolutely fantastic, this a negative for me, and I was really hoping they were not going to go this route.  Sorry if anyone disagrees, but this absolutely destroys any actually postive for me.  There are alot of postives doubt, but a huge huge negative is the numbered and zones areas.

Like somone said this is why world of warcraft feels amazing, no zoned areas, people in areas all together.   This is why for me even nearly 10 years on it feels more of a world than any game for me.  Yeha there might be alot of emphasis on going to citys atm, but where ever you want you can meet peopel, and not have to keep woundering where people are etc I dont want have to be zoning every time, and loading acreens galore to go to areas of the world all the time.

 

Personally, I don't find the zoning in GW1 too offensive.  Would I rather have a seamless world?  Sure.  But it's not so objectionable it's a game breaker given the size of GW1 zones and the stuff to do/discover there.

That's not what "destroyed AoC".  What destroyed AoC was being flat out unfinished in key infrastructure areas such as Mail, Auction House, 1/2 finished crafting, too many quests bugged.  And yes, there were problems at times with proper zoning, but not between map areas as I recall, but rather syncing up to party member instances within a zone (e.g. there were multiple instances of a given zone running, so when you formed a party you'd all have to sync to the same instance of it).

Also note WoW makes / made some minor use of instancing when WoTLK released.  Remember the one quest in Northrend (forget name) where Tyrion Fordring was in that base-camp?  Auto-instanced players based on if they'd done that quest or not.  If you had, the landscape was changed, if you hadn't it was the pre-battle setup for the mission.  You'd see peeps on your radar as dots, right next to you, but not visible to you . . . . different instance.  The point here is that instancing provides options for manipulation of content presentation to an entire population of players who may all be at different stages of progression.

Note I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your instinctive touch/feel assessment of a seamless world.  I prefer that as well and played WoW for five years, LOTRO for two. AoC for a bit.  Several others.  But I've found I don't object to the zoned approach as much as I thought I would.  At least to the point it's not a game breaker.

I thought I remember something being said about GW2 not being 100% zoned like GW1.  That there was some areas, or area that's common and seamless?  Apologies, vague recollection here.  Anyone have a quick cliff-notes version description of the world / city structure?  What's zoned, what's not?

Forget being paid off these guys are bias as hell.

Shame for crafting. I hope they will improve that aspect of the game. Personally I always liked crafting, not just because of items you could make but also that was good way to interect with other players, making it more dynamic game and not to be just grinding and boring quests.