Loading... Worst Foot Forward

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Posted Mon, Aug 31, 2009 by Ethec

Welcome to the 1,155th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

What's the biggest mistake today's MMOs make at launch? Is it letting players get burnt out on beta? Not putting enough work into the endgame? Too many servers? I tend to think it's something much easier to fix or prevent than any other content related issue. It's something I've seen before and I continue to see it with the first two top tier MMOs we've seen roll off this line in the past month. What is it? Check out Loading... Worst Foot Forward to see!

The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest Movers today :

Lineage 2 (UP 1 to #15)
Guild Wars (UP 1 to #16)
EverQuest (UP 1 to #17)

Recent MMO Releases

7/21- FFXI "Moogle Kupo d'Etat" Addon (release date)
8/4 - World of Warcraft Update 3.2 (content patch)
8/25 - CrimeCraft (release date)

Important Dates

9/4 - 9/6 - Penny Arcade Expo (PAX)
9/15 - 9/18 - GDC Austin
10/1 - 10/3 - EVE FanFest

Upcoming Releases

9/1 - Champions Online (release date)
9/9 - Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date)
9/15 - Fallen Earth (release date)
9/22 - Aion (release date)
10/9 - Cities XL (release date)
Early 2010 - APB

Loading... Daily

A lot of people say that graphics don't matter as much as good gameplay, and that's true to an extent. But good graphics do matter, largely because it's one of those rare criteria that you, your girlfriend, and your grandma can summarily judge in just a few minutes of watching someone play the game.

And whether you like your graphics stylized or photorealistic, many games have made huge strides with graphics in the past few years. Case in point, I actually tricked a visiting family member into thinking there was a football game on television last weekend with Madden 10 demo reel last week. WoW's graphics, once thought immune to the constant pressure for more polygons due to clever and extremely efficient art direction, is going back to the drawing board with Cataclysm. In addition to subtle improvements to the water and landscape, According to J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer, the four new races (Blood Elves and Draenei with Burning Crusade, Worgen and Goblin with Cataclym) simply put (or will put) the vanilla WoW human character model to shame. Blizzard's currently looking at a way to up the character model graphics without disappointing those that feel a certain attachment to the old model set.

Some MMOs (LotRO, DDO, and Vanguard for three) have made marketing hay over DirectX 10 support, and DDO, for example, does look noticeably better with how shadows flow over moving characters, for example. But Age of Conan, ever the whipping boy for DX10 promises gone temporarily bad, made the Vista-born feature something of a blue-baller among gamers. No one can slight Aion's visuals, for example, even though the game's entirely done in the much more widely adopted and relatively bug-free DX9.

But, regardless of DX9 or DX10 (or DX11 for that matter, with Windows 7 coming out on October 22nd), graphics in most of today's MMOs leave at least one thing to be desired. With hundreds of thousands of man hours invested in art and animation for today's top-tier MMOs, you'd think game developers would want to put their best foot forward on that special moment of moments, that very first time you login and see this completely new game world for the very first time. Not so.

When I logged into the last release and pre-release (CrimeCraft and Champions Online), I was greeted with high-performing yet painfully fuzzed-out 1024x768 resolution, made ever more crappy by my 30" monitor. No wonder people think these games look hopelessly out of date at launch. It's easily remedied by a quick trip to the options -> graphics settings screen (and glorious über-HD 2048x1536), but first impressions are everything nowadays.

I seem to recall that EverQuest 2, to SOE's immense credit, promptly implemented a feature that checked your framerate and punched up the graphics a bit if you had power to spare. Correct me if I'm wrong, active EQ2 players, but if you were in a raid environment where tons of spell effects were painfully slowing down out your machine, it automatically tamed down the graphics settings to get you to a playable framerate. Best of all, you can turn it off if you just plain want to slog through poor framerates to see the shinies. Good thinking, SOE.

Like developers need one more thing to do in the launch crunch, but I can't help but think that some kind of conservative graphics matching for available hardware is a necessity for today's MMOs. More adept users will continue to tweak the settings, but please, please establish a good looking baseline. Everyone wants the most out of the hardware they paid good money for, and in my opinion it's a pretty extreme disservice to your game if you're rendering it on the bottomfeeder 1024w resolution out of the box. (With all apologies to the min-spec folks and laptop gaming crowd - I'm sure 1024x768 looks mindblowingly awesome on your netbook.)

What say you? Has changing up the graphics settings in an MMO out of the box been like getting a much needed pair of new glasses? Has increased resolution ever significantly improved your first impressions of a game? Share your thoughts and ideas in our Loading... forum.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our WoW: General Discussion Forum

You're a bad person, no really think about it.

Our World of Warcraft community manager, Xerin, says you're a bad person. Really really really. "Let's look at the bad things you've done," he says. "You tortured a poor servant of Malygos for having a different opinion about magic. You caused him severe pain to get information out of him."

He may have a point there.

"You've got more blood on your weapons than most. By the time you reach level sixty you'll have killed thousands of different sentient beings."

And again.

Things aren't looking good for you. Head over to our WoW forum to redeem your soul before it's too late.

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"I think someone needs a hug...."

- Raxter54
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Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

4 new MMOG home-grown articles today, many from BlizzCon! 82 in August! 942 in 2009!

New Coverage and Guides At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Features:

Exclusive Champions Online Launch Interview with Bill Roper
The last few days leading up to a major MMOG launch is an exciting time for the developers and fans alike, and Champions Online is no exception. Ten Ton Hammer recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bill Roper to discuss the end of the open beta, the importance of player feedback and what kind of content updates players can look forward to once the game officially launches on September 1st, including a sneak peak at the Blood Moon event coming this October.
WoW: Cataclysm Q&A with Lead Producer J. Allen Brack
Ten Ton Hammer and a number of fansites and community representatives were invited to a Blizzard press conference with J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer on World of Warcraft. We had a chance to voice a few questions from our WoW community as Brack touched on a number of hotbutton and general interest topics for WoW players. In addition to the standard questions about lore, raid difficulty, the Warcraft movie, of particular interest were Brack's responses regarding the mood inside the studio after news of Cataclysm leaked out weeks before BlizzCon, level 80 accounts sold and "laundered" by a Battle.net merge, and why levels 1-5 weren't playable for Worgen and Goblin characters at BlizzCon.
Final Fantasy XI: Moogle Kupo d'Etat Walkthrough Tour
With Final Fantasy XIV on the way, many gamers have turned their attention back to Square Enix and their previous MMO offering Final Fantasy XI. Luckily, the folks at Square Enix have just released their latest major content addition to FFXI in the form of a Moogle Kupo d'Etat: Evil in Small Doses. The Ten Ton Hammer staff recently had the opportunity to check out the content included in this mini-expansion and were intrigued by what they found.
Aion Class Preview - The Cleric
We continue our look at the specific classes of Aion this week with the second of the Priest archetype choices - The Cleric. Choosing which path to follow when you come to that fork in the road will shape your game experience like few others. Make sure you have all the knowledge to make the choice that fits your play style best.
DC Universe Online Reveals the Green Lantern
New screenshots from Sony Online Entertainment's superhero-based MMOG, DC Universe Online has been released showing the Green Lantern in action. The new screenshots show some of the Green Lantern's powers as he displays them against several enemies within the created world of DC Universe Online.

Giveaways:

Fallen Earth Beta Key Giveaway
Just a few days remain for the Fallen Earth open beta, so seize your chance to test out the game prior to launch with a key from Ten Ton Hammer!
Two more Ten Ton Hammer beta key giveaways begin tomorrow!

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