Different maps/zonesworld in current line EQ1

[Dolalin]

EQ2 and WoW came out at more or less the exact same time. Desire being technically better quality, the WoW engine and art style felt more immersive. EQ2 didn't feel immersive at all.

[Dolalin]

All the above to say: aesthetics create immersion. Abandoning them in pursuit of mere technical improvement, ie throwing more polygons around as SoE did was a really terrible idea and hurt both EQ and EQ2 immeasurably. I have no idea why it's not talked about more.

[magnetaress]

Because it's about selling tech to an industry at that point. WoW won by hiring artists that knew you could create steaming piles of dog shit even if you just increased the polygons, so they opted for the more lighthearted far reaching feature complete, it even worked pretty good under wine design.

I agree with the above comments. The way to make a game immersive isn't through the engine, but the art itself, and if the artists are bad, or payed shills from the industry there to sell you pixel shader 3.0... well. That's a problem. I don't think wow relyed heavily on any of the newer stuff, and if they did implement pixel shaders it was much mroe sublte.

[magnetaress]

You can blame the Unreal Engine 2.0 for the advent of static meshes really taking over level design, and any level geomatry which is basically a static mesh should go straight to hell. They are designed to be decorations, but both EQ2 and later Skyrim, and some oblivion to an extent just went with 'lets make a segment of a dungeon and rotate it'. Which was a direct result of this. Because the engines were not optomized for indoor spaces and geometry.

[magnetaress]

None of the major engines are designed the way the earlier quake1-2 or EQ engines were. So you aren't likely to see a move away from this 'tubular' mesh design of rotated segments, as it's very quick to churn out a loot tube vs bug test and develop or server host pathing nodes and line of sight for a 'Sola' type dungeon.

Remember 'bigger is better' complexity and individuality or uniqueness is not cool or OK

[magnetaress]

Wow tries to compromise here, and they do a fair job of almost being OK, but it kills replayability, which has lead to the cycle of 'sub for 3 months of an expansion' then quit until the next rolls around. They have come the closest to being succesfull with mass market tech and production values. But they are still shit. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Unfortunately the story is lost in the noise and 10th disco floor cut and paste into "The Motherlode".

[magnetaress]

Once you've seen one seaweed patch or volcanic lava field, you've seen em all.

[magnetaress]

Unity is terrible for this, that said some game devs try to work around it as best they can and create a little charm, but it's unfortunate that that is the 'entry level' engine on the market.

[magnetaress]

*wrist*