Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures breaks all the current s..

CoinSpin wrote:
> John Lewis wrote:
>> Blizzard have been very cunning with Wow. They have concentrated their
>> graphics glitz in the areas that matter - the visible characters and
>> kept the polygon count low elsewhere. Hence, modest system
>> requirements while still looking great and the huge number of players.
>>
>
> I'm having flashbacks to Auto Assault... It had such extreme system
> requirements
<snip>

Alright, let's get off the "bash AoC" train for just one moment.

The system requirements are by no means "extreme"; the minimum is a
computer about 3 years old, and the recommended is a very reasonable
system that could have been built in the last two years.

At what point are developers "allowed" to cease supporting heavily
outdated hardware? I mean, you do realize that separate render paths
have to be created for SM1.4, SM2.0, SM2.0b, SM3.0 AND SM4.0 cards,
right? Should they be required to quintuple development time to appease
the Usenet curmudgeons? How far back into the annals of history must
support extend to be considered munificent? Should everyone have a
backup text MUD version, in case of errant 80486 users?

---

(And for that matter, people don't play WoW because it's pretty; your
hands are made up of a grand total of 6 polygons, dearest. They play
because it's a massive time sink in their vacuous non-existences.)

The Steam Hardware Survey (boo! hiss! I get from the peanut gallery )
comprises nearly 1.6 million unique computers, and the most common
resolution played at, at nearly 40% of all users, is 1280x960, followed
closely by, you guessed it, 1024x768 (32%). In this case, catering your
requirements to those resolutions is a very smart business move; right
around 20% of users had anything higher, and about 18% of that is
widescreens beyond 1280. If you want to push more than a million and a
half pixels every frame, you had better already be prepared to bring the
graphical prowess.

/AND/, 23.5GB is nothing, given how cheap storage is today. Heck, you
can get old-fogey PATA IDE 160GB hard drives for $45, delivered to your
door from Newegg. That's 28 cents per gig, get over yourselves.

TheSmokingGnu

PS: 750GB for $150, great googly-boogly. 20 cents a gig.

PPS: Cross-posting sluts. It's an RPG!

Thus spake john.dsl DeleteThis @verizon.net (John Lewis), Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:08:46 GMT,
Anno Domini:

>Unless this game has truly-addictive gaming substance under the
>"glitz", it will have a minority following and die a painful death. In
>fact, sufficient substance for prospective players to invest in
>massively-upgraded hardware besides the monthly fee. I shall be highly
>interested in the public reaction to this game 3 months after release.
>
>
>Blizzard have been very cunning with Wow. They have concentrated their
>graphics glitz in the areas that matter - the visible characters and
>kept the polygon count low elsewhere. Hence, modest system
>requirements while still looking great and the huge number of players.

As much as I despise Blizzard & have my disagreements with you John , I
can't but agree with you on all counts here. Why developers keep
force-feeding us eye candy, when we're already past saturation point on many
levels is a mystery. Well, not entirely - it's all about next gen this &
that & keeping up with the Jones', from selling Intel chipsets to NVidia
graphic cards to entire PCs. Are people really this transparent or stoopid
out there? Surely we're not just slightly more evolved sheep or sloths God
help us...? *sigh*

In any case, I'd go for a mmo that puts gameplay, playability & performance
above eye candy any day. I hope I'm also not in a <5% minority. :-/

--
Nostromo