[Mezoic]

I am sure many of you have seen the preview for this, any thoughts? To me it could be the best looking online-rpg yet, and I am not really a fan of them.

[Ahcri]

I have never played any MMORPG. The problem is that they all require monthly fees, and I don't know about you, but I think they're too damn expensive. I'd stick with Diablo II on Battle.net.

[aquamire]

I saw the screenies. It looks bootiful!! I'm not really an MMORPG gamer, but I'd be definately willing to try it. The guys at Blizzard must of been loosing hair over keeping it secret for so long.

[Keto]

i am a mmorpg player (mostly that is all that i play) and it looks great. i love how they kept the kinda 'cartoony' style of warcraft and transfered it into 3d. there artist team is excellent.

overall i think it is a wonderful idea and i will definately be playing it.

Achri: yes it will probably cost money per month but why are so many people against this? first of think of blizzard released games and how they have free battlenet that host probably the largest amount of people for free. so since blizzard has all this space and is giving it away for free then they will probably have tons upon tons of space when it is being payed for monthly. this means no downtime and no lag (hopefully . what you are really paying for is balance though. go to any of the d2 sites and they will have a read out of which class can beat the other classes and which ones will lose aginst them, these statistics are pretty much set in stone and certain skills are useless. sure evry once and a whie they will release a patch the trys to balance these problems but they dont have a team working on specifically balancing the game out. when it is a mmorpg they do have a team, and i bet that items, skills, stats, and level progression will be highly balanced. some other things that come to mind is the MM part massivly multiplayer, why play in max of 8 player games like d2 when you can interact with everyone all at once. story and exploration also come into play, again refering to d2, the story ends and is pretty short lived, there are the different zones to explore though but they become monotonous as the are pretty much the same everytime. in an MMORPG the story never ends, and depending on the game maker there is a range of player involvement with that story. sure the land is static and i dont think they will change that but surely it is much larger than the lands in d2 and much more intricate, the team could also add new lands whenever they felt like it, adding new continents/realms on the fly for the exact purpose of increasing the amount of land to explore. all in all i talk a lot, and how could you not give in to the monthly fees of mmorpgs when it is for such a great cause.

[Ahcri]

I know it's hard to build a MMORPG, and it's going to cost a lot of money to maintain it. But with Blizzard's popularity, I hope they can cut the price down a bit, then even I could join. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Warcraft, in fact Warcraft 1 and 2 are both my favorite games for a long time. I'm just glad they didn't choose to create "World of Starcraft", although that would make a pretty good first-person shooter.

[Jabberwocky]

Are they actually going to release it and when?
The only thing I'm worried about is that a lot of MMORPG's don't make it to their release date. Hopefully it does cause I like MMORPG's and Warcraft... found Warcraft 1 when I went on vacation a few weeks ago (didn't have a copy).

[Seraphire]

You know I can't wait.
It won't be out for awhile. 2003 or so, I think.
When you consider the amount of money you may spend, vs the time you spend on a game it makes more sense.

Most games you pay the 30-40 bucks for, do you really spend three months playing it?
I just wish they'd distribute the software, freeware/shareware, and charge for the monthly fee. Paying 30-40 for the software, then paying a monthly fee on top, seems a bit more then needed.

[burn0ut]

Is this wc3 we are talking about? in that case wc3 looks dope as fuck!

[dr . bang]

its good but too bad they're gonna release it in 2009

[Seraphire]

Burnout,
No. Warcraft 3 will be out this winter.(hopefully) It's a Real Time stategy.
Worlds of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer Online Role playing game or MMORPG. It isn't due for a while. Lets hope that 2009 doesn't end up being a realistic timeframe...

Two games.

[burn0ut]

is there a webpage for this???

[Akolyte]

lol, 2009

[Seraphire]

Burnout. http://www.blizzard.com Simple enough.

BG,
You have some good points. Anyone who's played Ultima Online, knows standing and hacking is boring...
But in WC3 I expect the use of skills will prevent it. The characters are supposed to be more then just point and click attackers. At least like marines, where you have to use the stimpack, or templars, where you have to use magic, vs zealots, where you just send them in.

2-d, vs. 3-d. I don't know. Sprites don't really cut it anymore. You can't do lighting/area effects. You can't do modifiable terrain.
And system restriants prevent making a truely impressive graphical game. No current system would be able to handle number of polygons you would want.

I have faith....

[Bg]

Seraphire: In Diablo, the skills didn't prevent the battle from becoming boring after a short period of time and I believe the system in WOW is as simple as it was in Diablo. It's really a shame that I could design a better battle system in one day than the one they're gonna make for WOW. And it's one of the _main_ areas in the game.

Lighting/area effects aren't as important as environment and unit graphics, or are they? (not in my opinion) If the maps are prerendered in a 3d-package (the program doesn't care how big your textures are or how many polygons you have, plus it's able to handle radiosity and soft shadows. Geometry can be done by using a height map (and so forth). Do you really think the realtime 3d-engines of today can compete with it (to any extent)? I can't see what's wrong with sprites, you can make them as detailed as you want, there isn't poly number or texture size restrictions in them either, and you can make an alpha channel so that the edges don't get pixelated. And yes, no current system is capable of handling the number of polygons I'd like to watch, and that's why I make 2D-games.

Capcom seemed to realize the advantages of 2d, they're gonna make the next game of the Resident Evil series (it's a remake of RE 1 for the Gamecube) with 2d-backgrounds and 3d-characters. They did Code Veronica X in full 3d and you can see the (poor) result...

[Bg]

World of Warcraft, hmm.. I'm not so eager about Blizzard's games anymore. Warcraft 2 is a good game and Starcraft was slightly better, but Warcraft 3 is just too much.. I never liked the battles in those games and Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft seem to fuck up everything. The characters may have nice running animations and such, but when they start to fight each other it's so damn unrealistic.. they just stand there and hit each other by turns. I read somewhere that the characters can take 3 times the damage they could in Starcraft (ARGHH!!)! I can almost hear the orc saying to human: "It's my turn now" and the human telling the fact to him "you have no chance to survive (make your time), cause I started this fight hahahaha"... Things are slightly better in Diablo series, though.

What's the point in making a 3d-game if you can't even rotate the camera (ie. it's fixed) and the characters consist of a miserably number of polygons? Taking the game back to 2D would have worked 10X better... and to prove this I recommend you to take a look at the cinematics Blizzard's cinematic team has made, and think what Warcraft 3 would look with those models and environments. To save you the trouble of answering: Fucking awesome!!! Why to move to 3d when you can achieve so very much better results in 2D?

WOW and W3 are both gonna be megahits, that's for sure, and good multiplayer games, but I simply hate the way Blizzard is nowdays afraid to make any major changes to their games, probably because of their fans.

Have a nice day everyone.

[Seraphire]

I've been playing D2 since it came out. I enjoy something there. Cross between item gathering and character building probably. Over battle. But as a Quake 3/Diablo fan, I don't want an overblown battle system. I would prefer a simpler design with attention focused elsewhere.

Graphics 2-d/3-d. Again, here, I'd far and away perfer Q3 graphics to any sprite based game, I can think of. And Q3's engine has become outdated. As you mentioned, whats the point of 3-d if you aren't going to utilize it? That's true. If the top-view RTS isn't going to use it, then perhaps sprites will do.

[Bg]

A simple user interface doesn't mean the design (ie. the game mechanics) behind it has to be simple. What Blizzard do is they promise 2x more items and weapons, and that's practically it. For example, the time designing the extra items takes could be used to implementing a better battle-system and nobody would even notice the "lack of" items (I don't think you have found all the items and weapons in Diablo 2, have you?).

Because World of Warcraft is gonna be an MMORPG, it would be nice to have some kind of interaction with other players (other than trading). With the current technology restricting game developers, the best area to implement that interaction is the battle.

As for the 2D vs. 3D. Take a look at the screen shots taken from the new Resident Evil 1 for the Gamecube ( http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0,11114,535836,00.html ) . Now you can think of a game that beats the crap out of any realtime 3D-game in the market. The reason there are not many sprite-based games to compete with the latest 3D-games is that so few (if any) don't seem realize the advantages 2D has over 3D in most situations. Maybe they're afraid or maybe they're just plain stupid. CDV, a German game company, are making 2D games, but they lack the professionalism Blizzard have.

You stated that the engine of Q3 has is old. Did you take into account that sprite engines have become outdated ~3-4 years ago, since they're not being actively developed anymore. I can prove my point when we get our game to the stage where I can provide you with some screen shots.

A sidenote: I quit playing Diablo 2 when I found myself collecting the gems...

[Seraphire]

Outdated sprite engines...
True. But what real advancements can be made there? Higher rez? I really don't know. I'm coming from the gamer p.o.v. I'll admit, my knowledge of the tech side is weak.

I just think each have their place. In a WOW type game I want the immersive nature that a 3d engine can provide much better then 2-d. And I do agree that unless it is going to make use of the 3-d aspect it doesn't really make much sense to have an RTS (WC3) in 3-d. The 3-d element is probably due to the original RPS that it was to be. It probably was going to utilize the 3-d more, then had to be cut back. Westwood's Command and conquer is a good example. The 3-d units in Tiberian Sun looked terrible. And didn't have a point. Higher res sprite based would have been better. (That the game wasn't fun, is a differant problem.) While Red Alert just ended up looking better.

I can see where the still images are often better in 2-d now. But I think 3-d processing is increasing far faster then 2-d's advancing. And the issue of low polygon, or lack of detail that is still a thorn in 3-d, will not be an issue for much longer.

D2, yeah, the main enjoyment for me, is the hardcore, and niche characters. Elemental driud, throw barbs, etc...

[Bg]

First off, let's make few things clear. I was talking about Warcraft 3 and its graphics, it's the game with the fixed camera and very low polygon counts per unit. What comes to WOW, the battle in the game sucks from what I've seen and read, but I haven't said a word about the graphics in that game (yet)

Of course 3D is better than 2D in games where camera is near the ground or the player, but in RTS-games it isn't as good as 2d and won't be for next couple of years.

[Seraphire]

"Of course 3D is better than 2D in games where camera is near the ground or the player, but in RTS-games it isn't as good as 2d and won't be for next couple of years."

Then we agree. Though I think with the Geforce 3 that it will be sooner, then later.


I think it's too early to assume the battle system on WOW is weak. There's a good chance much hasn't been implimented, and much will change.

[Ninja]

The thing that bothers me about MMORPGs is that you pay to obtain it, then your pay to use it. I think it should be one or the other, not both.