It's really me:) Thanks for your post and kind comments re: EQ. Can we come through again? We'll, we're certainly giving it our best shot -- keep your fingers crossed:)
You will be able to achieve meaningful character advancement in 30-60 minute sessions, especially in areas with more casual mobs, as well as when playing in the other spheres of gameplay (crafting, harvesting, diplomacy). We think the majority of our players are the type who can and want to play an MMOG 2-3 hours a night, or every other night, with the occasional Saturday spending a bit longer to do a raid. So if 60 minutes is the maximum you can allocate to playing the game, you should be able to have a good time and advance, although traveling to the depths of most dungeons is tuned around more like 2-3 hours sesssion. You mentioned 2-8 hours, and so I did want to say that 4-8 hour sessions are not the norm planned for the game, but rather 2-4.
That it would take the average player, the 'core' gamer as we have described our target audience on our message boards (e.g. the group of players that sit between truly casual and truly hard core) 6-12 months to hit max level doesn't seem unreasonable. The players who have hit 40+ in beta have gone through various tweaks of the exp curve, levled up to varying degrees in the other spheres (crafting, diplomacy), etc.
And for the record, we play the game on all sorts of systems, as well as test on different systems, from low end to high. I did bring in one high end system to show off the game on a 30" monitor with all of the options turned way up (both because it looks great and also so people in the room could see the game from the various places they were sitting). And, yes, it was my system and I do play often on it, with the new Dell 30" monitor that came out -- not sure what your issue is with that unless you are assuming that's all we play the game on (high end systems) which most certainly isn't the case.
Also, for what it's worth, the fact that you *can* play the game at a playable framerate at 2560x1600 with all the options turned up on a 3.8 ghz system with a x1900xtx is testament to how optimized the game is. Obviously to run at a more typical resolution of 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 even, you can do so on a much lower end system. We're also not done optimizing, and by release, systems and graphics cards that are on the high end of things today will be much more reasonable price-wise. So while the game does take advantage of the latest hardware, shader model 2.0, HDR lighting, etc. and not just in closed off 'FPS' areas, but also outdoors where you can see for 4+ km in a truly seamless world, it will not require an 'uber' machine to run. More power than, say, WoW, yes, but nothing crazy or that would make it such that the majority of gamers couldn't or wouldn't enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
It's really me :) Thanks for your post and kind comments re: EQ. Can we come through again? We'll, we're certainly giving it our best shot -- keep your fingers crossed :)
You will be able to achieve meaningful character advancement in 30-60 minute sessions, especially in areas with more casual mobs, as well as when playing in the other spheres of gameplay (crafting, harvesting, diplomacy). We think the majority of our players are the type who can and want to play an MMOG 2-3 hours a night, or every other night, with the occasional Saturday spending a bit longer to do a raid. So if 60 minutes is the maximum you can allocate to playing the game, you should be able to have a good time and advance, although traveling to the depths of most dungeons is tuned around more like 2-3 hours sesssion. You mentioned 2-8 hours, and so I did want to say that 4-8 hour sessions are not the norm planned for the game, but rather 2-4.
That it would take the average player, the 'core' gamer as we have described our target audience on our message boards (e.g. the group of players that sit between truly casual and truly hard core) 6-12 months to hit max level doesn't seem unreasonable. The players who have hit 40+ in beta have gone through various tweaks of the exp curve, levled up to varying degrees in the other spheres (crafting, diplomacy), etc. And for the record, we play the game on all sorts of systems, as well as test on different systems, from low end to high. I did bring in one high end system to show off the game on a 30" monitor with all of the options turned way up (both because it looks great and also so people in the room could see the game from the various places they were sitting). And, yes, it was my system and I do play often on it, with the new Dell 30" monitor that came out -- not sure what your issue is with that unless you are assuming that's all we play the game on (high end systems) which most certainly isn't the case. Also, for what it's worth, the fact that you *can* play the game at a playable framerate at 2560x1600 with all the options turned up on a 3.8 ghz system with a x1900xtx is testament to how optimized the game is. Obviously to run at a more typical resolution of 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 even, you can do so on a much lower end system. We're also not done optimizing, and by release, systems and graphics cards that are on the high end of things today will be much more reasonable price-wise. So while the game does take advantage of the latest hardware, shader model 2.0, HDR lighting, etc. and not just in closed off 'FPS' areas, but also outdoors where you can see for 4+ km in a truly seamless world, it will not require an 'uber' machine to run. More power than, say, WoW, yes, but nothing crazy or that would make it such that the majority of gamers couldn't or wouldn't enjoy.