Age of Conan

They are big. No matter what people tell, they are big. There are some obstacles tbh. But the big difference is, that you have to learn the zones a bit. Its a bit oldscholl-ish. Usually you cant just run across a zone. You have to find and learn the paths. Sometimes the paths are bottlenecked. Thats common in mmo's. There have to be roadblockers.

I had a day off today and i was for 6 hours in ONE zone (20-30 zone) . I saw two loading screens. Once when i entered a bar and once when i went to the guildcity zone to learn harvesting.

I have to agree- they are large maps, I came over from EQ2, all the zones are instanced just like AoC and I don't have any issues with it. It's all the WoW lovers that are complaining, what they don't realize is WoW is instanced just any other game, it's not seemless, it just tricks the enduser into thinking it is while it loads the content in the background.

To quote from Erling Ellingsen from the offical forums:

"Some areas are rarely, if ever at all, instanced. This includes hubs such as Tarantia, Conarch and Khemi. They can hold a very high number of players.

Other areas instance more easily, but I can assure you that most areas can hold way over 10 players. Because the game recently launched some areas tend to be more instanced than others, especially the early areas. This should probably even out more as we move forward.

We might go back and look at the instancing technology later and see what we can and what we want to improve (it is working exactly as intended now)."  - 24th May 2008, 17:12

So cities aren't instanced for the most part and they're going to look at instancing as the game progresses...

Originally posted by eugam

They are big. No matter what people tell, they are big. There are some obstacles tbh. But the big difference is, that you have to learn the zones a bit. Its a bit oldscholl-ish. Usually you cant just run across a zone. You have to find and learn the paths. Sometimes the paths are bottlenecked. Thats common in mmo's. There have to be roadblockers.

 

I had a day off today and i was for 6 hours in ONE zone (20-30 zone) . I saw two loading screens. Once when i entered a bar and once when i went to the guildcity zone to learn harvesting.

I like the zones where you have freedom of movement where you can run across the zone without having to learn the paths. Not really common in MMOs. In many MMOs the only road blockers in zones are that mobs are so high they'll kill you so you need to be careful where you tread and that you just cannot up and run anywhere you wish.

I agree; zones are big. You could play all day in Conall's Valley and never see a load screen. My main complaint about Conall's Valley is the sheer number of mobs that wander back and forth along the trails. It's tedious to get jumped by 3-4 wild boar as you're just trying to get from point A to point B.

I agree with the last two posts - the tedium comes from having to restrace steps in some of the zones. I hope they have some more zones under way (they have said that they have a live team working on new content in addition to an expansion pack team) - perhaps some reworking of mob placement in some of the more problematice zones and 1 or 2 more open zones within the next few months would be good.

Originally posted by Enigma

I like the zones where you have freedom of movement where you can run across the zone without having to learn the paths. Not really common in MMOs. In many MMOs the only road blockers in zones are that mobs are so high they'll kill you so you need to be careful where you tread and that you just cannot up and run anywhere you wish.

I love the large zones in AoC.  They are far larger than I have seen in games like COH, AO or WoW.  They are quite big... BUT  here is the caveat.  Just like some many other games, the zones are not really bordering each other.

The only game that I have ever been in that was truely unzones was Asheron's Call.  And AoC could have done better to remove some of the loading screens between zones.  I know I know, it is loading FAR more graphics for the visable area than AC likely had in an entire city... but I can dream can't I?

There are no zones in AoC, seriously people learn your terminology, AoC is fully instanced not zoned. AoC is more like Cod4 then it is like EQ2.

EQ2 is completely instanced - every zone in EQ2 is instanced even the cities - get your facts right before spouting off.

Originally posted by Keyno

EQ2 is completely instanced - every zone in EQ2 is instanced even the cities - get your facts right before spouting off.

You may want to get your facts correct :)