15th September 2004, 1:20 PM
In answer ABF, yes, the whole world, excepting when you travel between continents (since sitting on a boat or airship watching endless water would tax both the servers and the player) is seamless. You can walk from the inside of the crypt where undead start, into the city, to the surrounding land (past the gates), along the countryside, into a whole new region (new map), with all sorts of different textures, into a new town, and deep into a large building, without EVER seeing a load screen, EVER. It's all dynamically loaded in the background! Again, the exceptions are instanced zones and travelling between continents.
Oh yes, as you can probably tell by the pictures, you can swim. Undead don't need to breathe, so they can hang out underwater forever. If you try to actually SWIM between continents, that is, go into the ocean, when you get a certain distance from shore, an exxaustion timer will appear. So, you can't swim to Kalimdor. This timer doesn't appear unless you attempt to swim between continents though. It's basically just a fail safe.
Ya know, playing KOTOR, I found it convienient to just be able to select something by L+R scrolling between targets and click, and my character just walks there and opens the chest automatically. In a platformer of course, such a thing would totally kill the gameplay, because the controls ARE the gameplay. In an RPG, controls aren't the actual gameplay itself, just the way the player gets to the gameplay, so making them as easy and seamless as possible is a requirement.
Oh yes, as you can probably tell by the pictures, you can swim. Undead don't need to breathe, so they can hang out underwater forever. If you try to actually SWIM between continents, that is, go into the ocean, when you get a certain distance from shore, an exxaustion timer will appear. So, you can't swim to Kalimdor. This timer doesn't appear unless you attempt to swim between continents though. It's basically just a fail safe.
Ya know, playing KOTOR, I found it convienient to just be able to select something by L+R scrolling between targets and click, and my character just walks there and opens the chest automatically. In a platformer of course, such a thing would totally kill the gameplay, because the controls ARE the gameplay. In an RPG, controls aren't the actual gameplay itself, just the way the player gets to the gameplay, so making them as easy and seamless as possible is a requirement.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)