Because the alternative is login queues, slow laggy game play and server crashes.
No, its not a way to avoid spending money on server hardware? Then why do it?
But were not talking about 1 server. SWTOR is going to have multiple servers that instance the zones.
So its like WoW but theyre going to break everyone up into different instances on the same server.
A single server in eve works because its a gigantic space world with few players. WoW or other mmo;s it doesn't, imagine if WoW had 1 server, the amount of people in orgrimmar and stormwind would be ridiculous. The server outages would be nonstop. The players in eve are spread out over a vast area, but WoW would literally have 7 million people sitting in 1 city thats fairly small and there's no network hardware on the planet which would allow that to happen. Same principle for SWTOR.
It won't have 20 something different realms/shards/whatever like MMO standard? That's going to be a shitload of people in the static cities if I understood that right.
Actually it's not the same principle in The Old Republic. Unlike EVE or World of Warcraft, but like many other MMORPGs, SW:TOR will create a new instance of a zone when it gets too crowded. In EVE and World of Warcraft when this happens it gets very laggy and has even resulted in zone and/or server crashes.
It won't have 20 something different realms/shards/whatever like MMO standard? That's going to be a shitload of people in the static cities if I understood that right.
That would be UTTERLY retarded, and I don't think you're right. The instancing will apply to dungeons with players on different storied quests. I assume you realize that player interaction would be impossible if capital cities were phased.
Hey guys, LF someone to tarde mats with oh wait you're in a different phase of the city.
Yeah right.
Thats NOT going to happen, they will have multiple realms to accomodate the # of players like WoW.
That would be UTTERLY retarded, and I don't think you're right. The instancing will apply to dungeons with players on different storied quests.
I assume you realize that player interaction would be impossible if capital cities were phased.
I'm not in the beta so I can't confirm it myself, but Arsinek apparerently is and I've seen it confirmed a number of times on other forums.
No, obviously it wouldn't. It's not instanced per player, just when the zone gets too many people in it. You'll still have tons of people to interact with, and I'm assuming they'll make it pretty easy to switch between instances if necessary.
I've seen it used sucessfully in games like City of Heroes, EverQuest II, and Champions Online. Like in CoH and EQ2 at least, after the first month or so you'll hardly ever see it as players will be spread out enough through the game world. Still, if you'd prefer the way World of Warcraft handles it you can always log off for a few hours and pretend you're waiting in a server queue or for the server to come back up again.
City instancing was in CoH at launch. You were allowed to pick any instance you wanted, though, so one was always the trade hub, then you could do other things in a less populated instance lag free.
You call ANY of those game successful?
you and I have VERY different definitions of "successful" those games are all 100% crap..
and the city phasing was just 1 problem with it..
City phasing should NEVER happen..
it takes away part of the community and the suspension of disbelief.
Thank goodness TOR is taking the WoW approach on this one and not going with those "failed" games approaches.
Well, obviously you got your own perception of reality. City of Heroes and EverQuest II were and are successful, profitable, MMORPGs. While not everyone likes them, instancing has never been a big or common criticism of the games.
Stars Wars: The Old Republic isn't taking the World of Warcraft approach, although World of Wacraft's "phased" zones aren't entirely disimilar.
It made the simple act of meeting up with freinds a chore.
Different servers of course, but on each server will be multiple shards of static areas [Tabula Rasa used this method to keep population under control per area - to help cut down on network/graphics lag.
Of course - there will be queue's depending upon how full the server is. I think the "open" beta weekends in September will help them to determine what the cap per server will be.
Not in my experience. The city zones in EQ2 were almost never instanced anyways, they were practically deserted. Just the newbie zones and first overland adventuring zones had enough people to get regularily instanced. In City of Heroes it was just one of the starting zones and that's just becuase it became the place for everyone to hang out and socialize.
I only played Champions Online during some free trial weekends they had, but I as I recall they made switching between instances as simple as selecting one from a drop down menu.
On the other hand, World of Warcraft was a slow laggy mess at launch, with huge server queues. All instancing in Star Wars: The Old Republic is doing is trying to prevent a repeat of this.
Instancing of zones (yes, even cities) is a great thing for MMOs, as long as it's automatic and seamless (ie a new instance is created only server traffic/# of players trigger it and it goes away when no longer required) and as long as players can easily switch between them to interact with friends.
There is nothing worse in an MMO than standing around with a group of strangers competing to kill the same mob. This happens all the time in starter areas and instancing fixes it. Same deal when running through a city and getting massive lag because thousands are people are crammed into a tiny area (like the auction house). Yes, in a perfect world it would be better to allow every player in the same city but it's not feasible with the limitations of network hardware and bandwidth. And really, does it matter if you see 200 or 2000 other players around you when running through town? As long as it's not empty I'd rather not deal with the lag.
again even in Dalaran during the height of the game with 600+ people standing there..
Unless your computer is a fucking dinosaur 386 running on windows 3.1 with a VGA card on 56k modem.. you should NOT have an issue..
get a new freaking vid card and a decent connection and there are NO issues with framerates no matter what is on the screen..
my rig pulls down 100+ FPS in WoW with SLI 580s and an i7 even in cities.
Instancing is the death of MMO gaming.. it ruins the community that makes an MMO what an MMO should be..
you want small private spaces play GW2 or something single player..
open cities have been done since UO and EQ days with great success..
This is why consoles are killing PC gaming.. because lazy CHEAP people don't want to buy hardware and actually make their PCs run well.
So there will be different servers, but not enough to prevent the need to multi-instance cities?
How does TOR's trading system work? Can you "send" items over distances or do you have to physically walk up to people? If cities are multi-instanced, how do you meet people in a safe area to trade stuff if it does require physical proximity?
Note that when I say trading, I'm not talking buying and selling, I mean, if you want to physically hand something to someone.
There is an AH, Message system, and a trade window -- just like WoW.
I've actually never played anything but EQ. I'm guessing the trade window is what I was talking about(simple handoff to another player), what is AH and message system as far as item trading/selling?
an auction house that everyone can see and bid on your items..
as well as direct tells.
Will the auction house require you to go to it and physically stand in a booth(like EQ) or does it hold your items for you and sell 24/7?