They need to drop this lofty goal of having 200 players on screen...

"Lofty goal"? FFS, EVE Online has routinely several thousand players on screen at the same time, fighting. And that game is older than WoW (release data: Mai 2003 vs. WoWs November 2005).

Say what you will about World of Warcraft, it's wildly successful. Part of the reason for that success is it's accessibility - it's generic fantasy, with something in the lore for everyone, and it doesn't take itself too seriously. Plus, from the beginning it's tried to be on the lower end of PC Specs requirements, again with the idea that accessibility is the key being held in mind.

I promise you that with modern graphics, fights with hundreds of players simply aren't possible with the great variety of different rigs out there. I've played World of Warcraft (though not recently), and I have a pretty badass desktop, and even I had occasional lags and slow downs on Isle of Conquest, where maybe 60 players would clash together, spamming high particle AOE effects all over. ESO will have better graphics, or at least comparable graphics to World of Warcraft, it will have people will computers far inferior to mine, and apparently it will have even more players on screen. Logically, there is no way that lag will not be an issue.

Plus, in my experience MMO launches are always a bit messy, and plagued with latency. ESO is being made by a brand new company, created especially for making this game, probably with less breadth of experience than the average company. Why exacerbate at-launch problems even further with overly ambitious goals?

Here is EVE Online pvp: See it lag? See how it's basically an RTS? It's not an Apples-to-Apples comparison to what, graphically, we can expect from ESO.

In terms of Guild Wars, I've never played it but I would ask if these 'hundreds' of people were all being displayed on your screen at once, doing their pretty, bright, flashy moves all at once? Or were there just two hundred people in the general vicinity around you, behind walls, behind terrain, off of your screen?

Paradoxically, older games have an easier time with making large battles. When games are rendered with simplistic characters, low definition walls, little or no vegetation (i.e. ) you don't have much trouble. But with advanced particle effects, complex vegetation, textures, high definition models, maybe even detailed shadows with interesting, complex terrain and buildings...well there is just no comparison in resource use between what World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. uses compared to some of the older or different games you guys have mentioned.

Here is EVE Online pvp: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAAczC7PPIo See it lag? See how it's basically an RTS? It's not an Apples-to-Apples comparison to what, graphically, we can expect from ESO.

In terms of Guild Wars, I've never played it but I would ask if these 'hundreds' of people were all being displayed on your screen at once, doing their pretty, bright, flashy moves all at once? Or were there just two hundred people in the general vicinity around you, behind walls, behind terrain, off of your screen?

Paradoxically, older games have an easier time with making large battles. When games are rendered with simplistic characters, low definition walls, little or no vegetation (i.e. http://www.blogcdn.com/www.massively.com/media/2008/11/daoc_frontiers_1024.jpg ) you don't have much trouble. But with advanced particle effects, complex vegetation, textures, high definition models, maybe even detailed shadows with interesting, complex terrain and buildings...well there is just no comparison in resource use between what World of Warcraft, Age of Conan, Elder Scrolls Online, etc. uses compared to some of the older or different games you guys have mentioned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKZiwPoWujA, with over 2000 people in it.



The keywords you should look up are "adaptive level of detail". This allows a good modern engine to fall back to those "simplistic characters, low definition walls, little or no vegetation" variant of graphics in the distance with hundredths and thousands of characters at once where it doesn't matter much while still maintaining a proper visual style up close, where you're paying attention the most.

Again, the EVE video you showed me is, graphically, the same as an RTS game... It looks very impressive, yes, but graphically it's not quite as demanding as you seem to think it is. To suggest that there is a parity between what you've showed me, with those 'thousands' of players vs. what we'd see in ESO with 'hundreds' of players is ridiculous.

Still, what Khadirgro talks about with 'adaptive' detail does sound promising, though I'd need to see it in action to decide whether it's worthwhile, or detracts too much from the game.

Well I just registered for a chance to enter the Beta so we'll see what happens.

Again, the EVE video you showed me is, graphically, the same as an RTS game... It looks very impressive, yes, but graphically it's not quite as demanding as you seem to think it is. To suggest that there is a parity between what you've showed me, with those 'thousands' of players vs. what we'd see in ESO with 'hundreds' of players is ridiculous.

Mmos can be both casual and hardcoe. Its all about the path you choose. If you were grinding for gear, you obviously was not enjoying the casual aspect of the game and have no real reason to complain. My wife played wow very casually for over a year and never once got wrapped up in the get grind. She, quite literally, played casually.

well you don't get to see the end content that way and players in wow are mean as hell they are like:

"ZAMG your gear is 1.00001% lower in rating than what is needs to do the X dungeon in 300455.4455seconds instead of 30045858,54 seconds LULZ U svck"

I would like the game to have the immersion of the single players games. I dont want a cartoon third person only game

"Lofty goal"? FFS, EVE Online has routinely several thousand players on screen at the same time, fighting. And that game is older than WoW (release data: Mai 2003 vs. WoWs November 2005).

EvE Online has over 2000 player spaceships online. Not 2000 players with scores of variations of hairstyles, tattoos, armour skins, eye colour, height, race or any other variation that needs to be communicated between client and server.

Some people don't care about end-content, I had a friend in WoW who's entire game was role-playing guild chat. She loved it! There's an entire corporation in EVE dedicated to helping Newbies! The wonderful thing about MMO's is that they encompass such a wide play-style.