WAR (Warhammer Online)

Originally posted by urbanmonkey

Well, actually it proved several things:

1. 2008 video cards are just not powerful enough to run an MMORPG using "realistic" graphics engine. At least not in MMO mode. I mean look at the 88800 Ultra. A card released 18 months ago and still nothing can beat it. I remember times where you bought the best card only for it to be crap a year later. Sure Crysis looks great at full settings but only 0.1% of PC gamers have a rig that can run that decently (read MAX settings in DX10). And Crytek only had to deal with the engine and AI. No quests, no balancing, no crowded areas. In short, do the decent thing and stick to cartoony graphics as in WAR, LOTRO and WOW.

2. The best part in an MMO is the fact that you feel like you are a character in a parallel world. A seamless world just waiting for you to discover it. So what is the last thing you need in it? Loading screens. That is your greatest enemy. And AoC is basically a loading screen experience spiced up with some gameplay. I kid you not. That is why with all its shitty graphics people still play WOW. You can take a horse and run from Booty Bay to the Eastern Plaguelands without ever seeing a single loading screen. Try that in AoC.

3. Releasing a game that requires a high end computer to run at medium settings goes against the whole point of an MMO (FYI the first M stands for Massive). Anyone with a computer older than 2 years will not be able to play this game at all. Sure some people run dual 8800 GTS in SLI mode, but even them don't run the game very smoothly. These problems can be reduced after release, but a crappy game engine is a crappy game engine.

If WAR can avoid the loading screen plague and have the game running on average machines, it will have a decent shot at success. If the gameplay and combat are good of course :)

Stop crying cause you have a shitty computer. AOC runs amazingly good on a $400 computer.
And the game is aimed for an adult audiance, so move along .... Lastest patches has made miracles. Zoning takes between 2-5 seconds
on my computer. I can live with that.

Originally posted by Praxus

 

Originally posted by Fraxture

Oh God! I spent more times lodaing than leveling. I think when I reached 8th level in the AOC Open Beta, if it wasn't for the instancing, I would of been 13.

Hell, even to take a crap in the game is an instancing experience of 7 to 10 minutes. Then it hitched during the crapping process continually.

 

Speaking of crap, the above post is full of it.

Loading in AoC is quick if you have a newer pc. But I can see warhammer is going for the lowest common denominator with its cartoony wow graphics. Did they actually hire artists away from Blizzard? Cause it sure as heck looks like it.

 

 

Originally posted by zymurgeist

I've never understood why developers don't realize this is the reason consoles are eating their lunch. If your game can't run on commonly available hardware it's an overpriced coaster.

AoC is even more demanding than VSoH.  What the hell were they thinking.  Anyone in beta right now knows how smooth it runs....like sandpaper. 

WAR better not be like that or I'll be pissed.

I'm skipping the entire thread and addressing the OP:

1. & 2. They are powerful enough. I was running it using a single 8800 GT with 512/mb DDR3, and 4 gigs of high speed DDR2 system RAM. I ran a fairly consistent 30 fps without SLi or multi-core support enabled. Oh, right, and the game was running in DEBUG MODE. Beta, anyone heard of it? My load times were almost always brief. Most peoples' problems stemmed from the fact they did not have enough RAM. The game, just sitting there doing nothing, uses close to 2GB in some places. RAM is cheap, if you have an awesome video card and are trying to play newer games with 2gb of system RAM, you need to get real. Just because a pseudo-seamless environment is right for WoW does not mean it is right for other games.

3. Again, you are wrong. There were people running the game with GeForce 6800's. My old computer with an 8x AGP 6800 could probably run AoC with a RAM upgrade. I would recommend shader model 2.0, no AA, no AS, shadows off, and med or low texture quality, but it would run fine. There were a lot of people saying that upgrading their drivers to nVidia's current beta drivers increased performance dramatically as well.

Bottom line, unless you extensively troubleshooted your crappy performance, and made allowances for the fact it was a beta client running in debug mode, you need to place a big part of the blame on yourself. Personally, I had more troubles with server lag, but I understood this was a stress test. Looks like they stressed the servers.

-Sinistrad

Originally posted by KatzuAion

And well WoW graphics might be simple and need low spec system, but the game is normally very buggy in terms of system crashes, for example wow doesnt run at all with the new 9xxx and 8xxx Nvidia Graphics, normally will generate the BLACK SCREEN error from doom.

I have yet to see any semi-decent computer built in the last 4 years that has been unable to run WOW well... As for the new 8xxxx and 9xxxx graphics cards, they SMOKE the game. They look great at max settings! I have tried both and have had no problems...

Sorry, but if this is your experience, you are doing something wrong.

Originally posted by kdoane12

I have two questions:

 

1. What is the point of this thread?

 

2. If you have to point out what you find is wrong with AoC, which plenty of people have, why on earth is it in the Warhammer forum?

Players like different things, different games and different aspects of games. That is why there are so many different games - they appeal to different people. If you don't like a game, great. Someone else does.

Not the place, and not worth reading/writing/arguing about.

but it seems like 99% of performance problems have been fixed with the "miracle patch"

but like this guy up here said.

"Players like different things, different games and different aspects of games. That is why there are so many different games - they appeal to different people. If you don't like a game, great. Someone else does.

Originally posted by shylock1079
This is one of my first post on these boards so you can mock my inexperience all you wish. AoC will be a "niche" title as it is. Nothing is wrong with that. It's appeal is like comparing Eq2 vs WoW. One focus on graphic and world features..while the other has a wider audience due to less graphic restrictions and...well...its EA-Mythic.

EQ2 is Sony Online Entertainment (SOE)

WoW is Activision Blizzard/Vivendi

Yeah..sorry I didn't clarify.  It's graphics vs. mass appeal like eq2 which is soe vs wow blizz.  Everquest had some very steep graphic demands when it was released.  On its highest its still pretty sharp.  Wow stuck with the simple cartoon templates which alllowed even those people simply curious to be able to try it out with their home PC's and get hooked.  It was a pretty remarkable marketing ploy. 

In regards to EA-Mythic...I am expressing that EA is a marketing giant and therefore has a lot more resources to reach the casuals, the hardcore, and even the younglings who have yet to discover mmo's.  That isn't an overly good thing..but it will sell boxes.