Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (
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On 28 Feb 2005 02:17:56 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>Most games let you rotate the camera and put it pretty much whereever.
>Frankly I find that behind shoulder the camera, but not RIGHT behind, is
>the most friendly for me.
I would have to agree/confess that, ideally, a game should have a
rotatable camera so you can pick whatever viewpoint you want. UO's 2D
graphic engine is badly out-of-date at this point. What I like about
it, though, is the viewpoint. You can sorta-kinda set up an overhead
view in EQ and others with movable cameras, but its always clear that
the option was just something thrown together quickly and with as
little work as possible - your always wind up not being able to see
your character because buildings and trees are in the way.
My own ideal vision of a MMORPG would have high-quality 3D graphics
with a camera system able to do an overhead 3/4 perspective at least
as well as UO's (but with other camera options that would be available
because the 3d-ness of the world.)
>The only major difference between CoH and EQ is that you run around in
>tights instead of armor.
I'll take the armor over the tights, thank you very much
>? the difference?
Heh, sorry. Must have spaced out there or something
The
difference is that its not the only option (or even the best one.)
>Umm.... Okay. So what "reasons" are there in UO to talk to other players,
>that aren't there in EQ?
A big one used to be crafting. At this point, though, OSI has moved
on to an EQ-style uber-loot system in which crafted items are utterly
worthless because anyone who's played more than a month has 5 sets of
armor that are far better than anything players can make.
>You are aware of the high-level of banter that typically went on in EQ
>totally unrelated to grouping, are you not?
Yep. Actually, that was one of the reasons I hated the game: 90% of
the players were jerks and idiots that I wanted nothing to do with.
UO's 2D graphics do have one major advantage: the filter out a whole
lot of 14 year olds.
>Riiiiiight. Except that's not at all how it works. In EQ you can filter out
>stuff you don't need to see for one thing,
Most of it is stuff that you do need to see, or at least should see.
And its all information that you CAN see in UO with much less stress
because UO's presentation of the information is much better. You can
easily see where all the monsters are, where all your fellow players
are, what monsters are casting what spells (or taking other special
actions), how much life several different monsters and players have at
the moment and more - all with one glance. The information that's
easy to digest in UO becomes an overwhelming flood of spam in EQ and
most other similar games.
> but for another, you don't sit
>there and have an idle conversation during the middle of battle!
I know I didn't give a good example there, but there are a lot of
conversation topics that need to go on during battle. I won't even
get into downtime, which UO virtually doesn't have
>Oh really? So combat was so simplistic that you can just sit there and type
>away oblivious to what is happening?
What's so complicated about EQ? For warriors, you turn on auto-attack
and occasionally click the 'kick' button. For spellcasters, you
root/debuff and sit until the monster is mostly dead and then nuke.
For healers, you sit until someone is seriously hurt, stand up and
throw a heal and sit back down.
>No, there were free shards as soon as someone invented the UO server
>emulator program, which was maybe 6-12 months after it launched. The reason
>for the shards entire existance is so that people could play and not pay.
>There are shards that are nothing more than exact clones to the pay
>servers. Or at least, there were, back when I actually looked into this.
True. Personally, I'm not terribly fond of most of those shards
because they're usually run by someone on a power trip (often who only
plays on private shards because they were banned on OSI for some
reason or another.) Still, though, there's a lot of shards that
differ significantly from the OSI experience. Actually, I think the
number of shards that try to emulate OSI in all ways is probably at an
all-time low: a lot of shards that used to emulate OSI have broken
off on their own since AOS.
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