the design that modern mmos remind me most of nowadays are theme parks; everybody's on the same ride having the same experience which insists that you're centered in the story, but your actual agency is reduced to picking which ride to go on next
The advantage held by FFXIV is that right from the very start the game is presented to the player as a single player game that allows you to play with other people who are also playing a single player game. Game progress is not about gear level, but about story completion. You can't skip story content by and large and the game treats story content as a reward.
WoW on the other hand treats the story as a joke half the time, as something to skip over to get to the good stuff. Sometimes the player is the center of the story, sometimes just another body out in the world. Typically the player's status resets every expansion which produces a narrative focus that is all over the place. Consistency would go a long way to creating more of a coherent story and feel of the story.
the design that modern mmos remind me most of nowadays are theme parks; everybody's on the same ride having the same experience which insists that you're centered in the story, but your actual agency is reduced to picking which ride to go on next
Eh isn't that what is literally called "theme-park MMO"?
The advantage held by FFXIV is that right from the very start the game is presented to the player as a single player game that allows you to play with other people who are also playing a single player game. Game progress is not about gear level, but about story completion. You can't skip story content by and large and the game treats story content as a reward.
WoW on the other hand treats the story as a joke half the time, as something to skip over to get to the good stuff. Sometimes the player is the center of the story, sometimes just another body out in the world. Typically the player's status resets every expansion which produces a narrative focus that is all over the place. Consistency would go a long way to creating more of a coherent story and feel of the story.
I'm playing both XIV and WoW at the moment, and each definitely has its pluses and minuses.
XIV excells in its story and presentation. It's essentially a single-player Final Fantasy with multiplayer dungeons and boss fights. There's hardly any "Run around and collect 10 X" quests. My biggest complaint is how small and sectioned off the world is. While travel is a lot easier (on-demand teleportation FTW), the world itself feels disjointed due to the way it's constructed, which is likely due to the fact that the game was originally designed for the PS3.
WoW has a much more united world. Zones flow a lot better. It feels like a world rather than stages. But, at least in early levels (my current character is only level 42), it just feels like really repetitive busy work with no payoff. It's just about grinding through one unremarkable quest after another to gain levels.
The advantage held by FFXIV is that right from the very start the game is presented to the player as a single player game that allows you to play with other people who are also playing a single player game. Game progress is not about gear level, but about story completion. You can't skip story content by and large and the game treats story content as a reward.
WoW on the other hand treats the story as a joke half the time, as something to skip over to get to the good stuff. Sometimes the player is the center of the story, sometimes just another body out in the world. Typically the player's status resets every expansion which produces a narrative focus that is all over the place. Consistency would go a long way to creating more of a coherent story and feel of the story.
I'm playing both XIV and WoW at the moment, and each definitely has its pluses and minuses.
XIV excells in its story and presentation. It's essentially a single-player Final Fantasy with multiplayer dungeons and boss fights. There's hardly any "Run around and collect 10 X" quests. My biggest complaint is how small and sectioned off the world is. While travel is a lot easier (on-demand teleportation FTW), the world itself feels disjointed due to the way it's constructed, which is likely due to the fact that the game was originally designed for the PS3.
WoW has a much more united world. Zones flow a lot better. It feels like a world rather than stages. But, at least in early levels (my current character is only level 42), it just feels like really repetitive busy work with no payoff. It's just about grinding through one unremarkable quest after another to gain levels.
WoW also excels in feeling better to play. Some combination of netcode, animations, and system-level stuff makes it feel better to push in button in WoW than any other MMO, imo.
WoW has always felt pretty smooth to play in comparison to its competition of the era. It has always been a bit of a janky experience going to other MMOs.
There has been a LOT more ability lag in bfa. I realize in general there is more data being passed, but they havent done shit to upgrade their servers. 40v40 was possible in past expansions with maybe some fps loss. Now everything lags out if its even 15v15
There has been a LOT more ability lag in bfa. I realize in general there is more data being passed, but they havent done shit to upgrade their servers. 40v40 was possible in past expansions with maybe some fps loss. Now everything lags out if its even 15v15
You really see this in War Mode a lot around Tortollan WQ sites. There'll suddenly be a raid there and everyone in the entire zone can't do shit.
that shit happens in the 40v40 battlegrounds, where they probably should have that crap ironed out. but yea its always fun just doing whatever in a zone then suddenly you push buttons and nothing happens, and someone in general says "theres an (opposite faction) raid at X location". Even in non warmode when there are the invasion things, everything can lag really hard. It really makes it seem more like wow is just on life support with cursory looks towards developing new stuff. They sure arent investing in any hardware.
I hope the WC3 remaster comes with some server upgrades as well because they weren't all that hot back in the day, but i seriously doubt they will do much with it.
that shit happens in the 40v40 battlegrounds, where they probably should have that crap ironed out. but yea its always fun just doing whatever in a zone then suddenly you push buttons and nothing happens, and someone in general says "theres an (opposite faction) raid at X location". Even in non warmode when there are the invasion things, everything can lag really hard. It really makes it seem more like wow is just on life support with cursory looks towards developing new stuff. They sure arent investing in any hardware.
I hope the WC3 remaster comes with some server upgrades as well because they weren't all that hot back in the day, but i seriously doubt they will do much with it.
That's pathetic. I last played in MoP/beginning of WoD and I don't remember it being that bad. There'd be a problem sometimes on World Boss fights with like 80 people, but I don't remember the game having significant network issues for lots of players outside of that.
I hope the WC3 remaster comes with some server upgrades as well because they weren't all that hot back in the day, but i seriously doubt they will do much with it.
Warcraft 3 is mostly peer to peer, with the clients kept in perfect sync. Any in-game lag is due to that, not anything on Blizzard's end.
That was immensly helped by the UI being incredibly moddable.
I've used various custom UIs over the years.
These days, playing casually, I just use the default UI. It's 100% fine for my purposes.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I remember back in Vanilla / TBC my guild insisted that I get a particular raid mod. I asked why it was necessary and they rattled off features - most of which I didn't need nor were pertinent to raiding. The one function that actually was, was a thing that would pop text up on the center of your screen about shit going on in the fight. Buuuuuuut it turns out that kind of info would happen with the game's normal feedback system, like bosses emoting and shit.
I remember back in Vanilla / TBC my guild insisted that I get a particular raid mod. I asked why it was necessary and they rattled off features - most of which I didn't need nor were pertinent to raiding. The one function that actually was, was a thing that would pop text up on the center of your screen about shit going on in the fight. Buuuuuuut it turns out that kind of info would happen with the game's normal feedback system, like bosses emoting and shit.
People wanted everyone to have ctraid because the mod would only work with other people that had the mod, which was important for healers and decursors. There were some other things that were nice to have, but that was the primary thing.
Star Wars Galaxies(how I miss it) had the most intuitive and minimalist UI of any MMO of its time up until WoW came by a year and a half later.
(yes, that is a player house with a wookie food vendor set up in it)
It even had a unified bag system, which 15 years later WoW still can't quite grasp without a player mod.
It was pretty competitive with WoW's in terms of minimalism, you can see a lot of the UI elements that were very similar to what eventually formed vanilla WoW's UI. WoW's claim to fame though was moddability, and it definitely "felt" more responsive to play by comparison - but beyond that I don't think in itself it was particularly more impressive than some of the things that came before it.
It was post-WoW, but I remember the interface of City of Heroes feeling really clean.
But I never really spent much time in other MMOs, so I don't have much to compare it too.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
The lack of Ultima Online pictures on this page is making me sad.
(I'm at work and the firewall blocked every one I tried to share)
Here you go @GuildNav ! This is my house from UO back in the day. It got used by some of the sites since we had one of the first small houses in the game I believe.
I don't like addons that combine bags. I like "specializing" what each bag holds.
Well, the thing is Galaxies had so many novel ways to organize and categorize your items that it didn't matter at all if your core inventory was a single space. But WoW is so regressive in how it allows you to manage your inventory by comparison that it's hard to imagine it came out a year and a half after Galaxies, and even harder to imagine that it hasn't significantly changed in 15 years.
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WoW on the other hand treats the story as a joke half the time, as something to skip over to get to the good stuff. Sometimes the player is the center of the story, sometimes just another body out in the world. Typically the player's status resets every expansion which produces a narrative focus that is all over the place. Consistency would go a long way to creating more of a coherent story and feel of the story.
Eh isn't that what is literally called "theme-park MMO"?
I'm playing both XIV and WoW at the moment, and each definitely has its pluses and minuses.
XIV excells in its story and presentation. It's essentially a single-player Final Fantasy with multiplayer dungeons and boss fights. There's hardly any "Run around and collect 10 X" quests. My biggest complaint is how small and sectioned off the world is. While travel is a lot easier (on-demand teleportation FTW), the world itself feels disjointed due to the way it's constructed, which is likely due to the fact that the game was originally designed for the PS3.
WoW has a much more united world. Zones flow a lot better. It feels like a world rather than stages. But, at least in early levels (my current character is only level 42), it just feels like really repetitive busy work with no payoff. It's just about grinding through one unremarkable quest after another to gain levels.
WoW also excels in feeling better to play. Some combination of netcode, animations, and system-level stuff makes it feel better to push in button in WoW than any other MMO, imo.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
You really see this in War Mode a lot around Tortollan WQ sites. There'll suddenly be a raid there and everyone in the entire zone can't do shit.
I hope the WC3 remaster comes with some server upgrades as well because they weren't all that hot back in the day, but i seriously doubt they will do much with it.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
That's pathetic. I last played in MoP/beginning of WoD and I don't remember it being that bad. There'd be a problem sometimes on World Boss fights with like 80 people, but I don't remember the game having significant network issues for lots of players outside of that.
Warcraft 3 is mostly peer to peer, with the clients kept in perfect sync. Any in-game lag is due to that, not anything on Blizzard's end.
This is true, but it was also a conscious design decision on the WoW Devs staff to expose that to the players.
I've used various custom UIs over the years.
These days, playing casually, I just use the default UI. It's 100% fine for my purposes.
People wanted everyone to have ctraid because the mod would only work with other people that had the mod, which was important for healers and decursors. There were some other things that were nice to have, but that was the primary thing.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004484595
correct
my nostalgia is flaring up
To be fair most people played in transparent view, not that old timey view. But yeah eq is a hard game to look at.
pleasepaypreacher.net
and harder to get the damned things to work correctly
I had the most beautiful UI for EQ
I 100% believe this, but configuration was like 20 hours worth of work with those damn files lol
(yes, that is a player house with a wookie food vendor set up in it)
It even had a unified bag system, which 15 years later WoW still can't quite grasp without a player mod.
It was pretty competitive with WoW's in terms of minimalism, you can see a lot of the UI elements that were very similar to what eventually formed vanilla WoW's UI. WoW's claim to fame though was moddability, and it definitely "felt" more responsive to play by comparison - but beyond that I don't think in itself it was particularly more impressive than some of the things that came before it.
STAY STRONG, THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE THE MEETINGS FOR
Of course, if I were to log in to EQ today, that content would be irrelevant and trivial. Same problem WoW has.
And yes, I miss that game a lot too.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
But I never really spent much time in other MMOs, so I don't have much to compare it too.
Mattekars ain't gonna kill themselves.
(I'm at work and the firewall blocked every one I tried to share)
Here you go @GuildNav ! This is my house from UO back in the day. It got used by some of the sites since we had one of the first small houses in the game I believe.
Well, the thing is Galaxies had so many novel ways to organize and categorize your items that it didn't matter at all if your core inventory was a single space. But WoW is so regressive in how it allows you to manage your inventory by comparison that it's hard to imagine it came out a year and a half after Galaxies, and even harder to imagine that it hasn't significantly changed in 15 years.