another "might buy thread"

[bizango]

To the initial post, what raynes said...

But I'd like to add to the zones answer. It is not chopped up like EQ1 was. It is more akin to how DAOC is, where there large zones divided seamlessly into regions for chat & so on. Examples of these regions are, each race's homeland, each race's newbie island, Prime Roots, and so on. There are teleportals between these zones which require load time, tolerable because you aren't traversing between them all that often.

I can speak for the Fyros capital city, it is a huge maze with several hundred NPCs. My first impression was they hired some medaeval european city planners for the layout and southwestern american pueblo architects for the building designs. Also, with my system I need to reduce character detail to minimums with that many people around.

The encyclopedia is THE MAJOR QUEST of the game. It is not implemented yet. As characters accomplish tasks, gain fame, do certain things, etc, they will learn portions of their personal encyclopedia. As they learn things, they gain abilities not available any other way. It is hinted that eventually the encyclopedia will unlock new areas for characters to venture to.

There are no loadtimes entering buildings, they are seamless with the exterior. I'll qualify that by saying there are some teleportals within buildings, more like elevators that will display a couple seconds of splash screen as you move from one location to another. As an example I can enter the Fyros palace and walk up and down staircases between the 3-4 magnificant levels all seamless. But on the other hand, I enter the guard barracks where there are many of the elevators, each having their few seconds of oblivion...

By the way, even though my framerate in cities don't play well, I'll sometimes crank up all the detail parameters just to look around - - - beautiful.