Phasing Technology
Posted 08-25-2008 at 11:47 PM by Norrath
J. Allen Brack, one of the producers of Wrath of the Lich King, mentioned something called 'phasing technology' in an interview with Eurogamer a couple days ago. (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=221566)
He mentions it has to do with "world states", and depending on what 'flags' you have, you will see one or the other.
One of the most obvious examples is Ebon Hold -- for starting death knights, Ebon Hold is chock full of Naxxramas and Lich King NPCs. Once they've completed their main questline, however, they cannot see those NPCs any longer.
Sort of an 'instanced' world view.
I cannot begin to tell you how excited this makes me.
It makes it possible to move storylines along.
Remember Onyxia? For Alliance players, at the end of a long quest-chain, you would 'out' her in the middle of Stormwind. Except, five minutes later, she'd be back.
When this gets implemented, she could disappear. While I realize it might not be possible to fix old world quests like this -- it would sure be one hell of a job -- it would be SO AWESOME to have it done.
You've rescued those villagers? Great, they're now home and you won't find them in danger again.
You blew up that house? It stays blown up to you, but the guy next to you who hasn't done the quest sees it whole.
The only problem with this is that it introduces a disjoined world view... but frankly, I can live with it. This is an AMAZING step forward.
He mentions it has to do with "world states", and depending on what 'flags' you have, you will see one or the other.
One of the most obvious examples is Ebon Hold -- for starting death knights, Ebon Hold is chock full of Naxxramas and Lich King NPCs. Once they've completed their main questline, however, they cannot see those NPCs any longer.
Sort of an 'instanced' world view.
I cannot begin to tell you how excited this makes me.
It makes it possible to move storylines along.
Remember Onyxia? For Alliance players, at the end of a long quest-chain, you would 'out' her in the middle of Stormwind. Except, five minutes later, she'd be back.
When this gets implemented, she could disappear. While I realize it might not be possible to fix old world quests like this -- it would sure be one hell of a job -- it would be SO AWESOME to have it done.
You've rescued those villagers? Great, they're now home and you won't find them in danger again.
You blew up that house? It stays blown up to you, but the guy next to you who hasn't done the quest sees it whole.
The only problem with this is that it introduces a disjoined world view... but frankly, I can live with it. This is an AMAZING step forward.
Total Comments 5
Comments
 |  A friend of mine who was lucky enough to get a beta key was telling me about this, and it does sound pretty nifty. The only problem is, another friend who also has the key, started up a death knight, and the one who'd started previously was going to help him out, only he couldn't, because they weren't on the same part of the story. A house that the 2nd one was supposed to destroy had already been destroyed by the 1st one, and so the 1st one couldn't help. That's the only problem I have with it: it forces people to go solo, unless they're at the same spot in the chain. At least now, you can help anyone with anything, regardless of what spot you're at, or even if you have the quests at all. |
Posted 08-26-2008 at 05:43 AM by salihe  |
| | This sounds like it could be very cool for big story intensive quest lines. As for helping people once you've done it, I'm sure they could include an option to allow you to see what the other player can see. It would only really involve a temporary change of the flag on the player who's already completed the quest. We'll see I guess. I'm sure they won't use this for every quest anyway. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 07:01 AM by Arrivan |
| |  Salihe - that's AWESOME. My biggest lament in wow is that it doesn't have solo instances - places where people HAVE to perform or they can't progress on that quest. It's always bothered me that if you couldn't do a solo quest, solo, you lfg it, instead of cranking up the effort. |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 11:42 AM by Alent |
| | Do I smell a Caverns of Time BG in here somewhere...? |
| Posted 08-26-2008 at 12:41 PM by Sunderhorn |
| | That is an awesome design feature. The WoW universe is far too static so that it delivers the same experience to thousands of players in each realm over and over. With this feature each player would feel that they are affecting the world AND group efforts would appear to affect the world because people will talk about their world views and they will be the same: Remember when we had to rescue those villagers? Yeah, I saw them yesterday they're still rescued. No there is one old-world area that is begging, no crying for this feature... Fix that inn in Westfall, finally! |
| Posted 10-15-2008 at 02:29 PM by Machus |
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