2nd November 2004, 12:12 PM
No. One of Arena.Net's basic ideas is that online games sell and do better without fees -- Diablo II got 3 or 4 million players online while EverQuest maxed at 400,000. So there is not one. Just like Battle.Net, which they helped make. :)
How do they do it? Many ways. First, all combat zones (exploration, campaign, pvp) are instanced. All town/find-a-group areas are open, but are broken into pieces (as you can see in the screenshots of the town with the District # button -- that lets you choose to switch between the numerous districts it's broken into. There are not seperate hard servers -- instead there are servers, more for an area (like the town) with more people (in this test it maxed out at over 100 districts) and less for, say, the room where you make parties for mission five (never saw more than five districts). Players can switch between them freely. So, they reduce loads by instancing most of the game and dividing the rest into managable chunks. This is also true in the exploration zones -- the world is broken into many seperate maps and you load the next area when you get to each boundary. And as I said, it's like a branching tree wiht multiple entrances -- you COULD get to any of the missions by land but getting across the zones is hard. The purpose of it is for exploration really. Sometimes you'll find towns or sidequests, but it's mostly for exploration... As I said, it's not all open but is mostly in cooridors, but it branches frequently so it isn't all a linear path or something. And it's also made more varied because of how you can start from many places -- each of the campaign missions (except the first) and the town have exits into the wilderness, and travelling between those points is a very dangerous proposition. And of course if your party dies, you start back from town... frusterating, but fun enough that you'll want to try again. :)
Anyway, how else? Well, they also will have regular expansion packs -- every 6-8 months supposedly. They will not be required, but will add stuff... so people that like the game would get them. Also, they are expecting the no fee thing to mean better sales than a standard MMORPG. But I'd say the key is that the game structure is very deliberately NOT based on standard MMORPG protocols. Warping around the map to missions, a low and easy to reach level 20 cap to minimize the amount of time required to be good at the game (the grind), etc... it's a different design and one that MMORPG players who come in expecting a MMORPG sometimes don't like too much. I, on the other hand, think it's great...
How do they do it? Many ways. First, all combat zones (exploration, campaign, pvp) are instanced. All town/find-a-group areas are open, but are broken into pieces (as you can see in the screenshots of the town with the District # button -- that lets you choose to switch between the numerous districts it's broken into. There are not seperate hard servers -- instead there are servers, more for an area (like the town) with more people (in this test it maxed out at over 100 districts) and less for, say, the room where you make parties for mission five (never saw more than five districts). Players can switch between them freely. So, they reduce loads by instancing most of the game and dividing the rest into managable chunks. This is also true in the exploration zones -- the world is broken into many seperate maps and you load the next area when you get to each boundary. And as I said, it's like a branching tree wiht multiple entrances -- you COULD get to any of the missions by land but getting across the zones is hard. The purpose of it is for exploration really. Sometimes you'll find towns or sidequests, but it's mostly for exploration... As I said, it's not all open but is mostly in cooridors, but it branches frequently so it isn't all a linear path or something. And it's also made more varied because of how you can start from many places -- each of the campaign missions (except the first) and the town have exits into the wilderness, and travelling between those points is a very dangerous proposition. And of course if your party dies, you start back from town... frusterating, but fun enough that you'll want to try again. :)
Anyway, how else? Well, they also will have regular expansion packs -- every 6-8 months supposedly. They will not be required, but will add stuff... so people that like the game would get them. Also, they are expecting the no fee thing to mean better sales than a standard MMORPG. But I'd say the key is that the game structure is very deliberately NOT based on standard MMORPG protocols. Warping around the map to missions, a low and easy to reach level 20 cap to minimize the amount of time required to be good at the game (the grind), etc... it's a different design and one that MMORPG players who come in expecting a MMORPG sometimes don't like too much. I, on the other hand, think it's great...
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