Blizzard announced "Classic" World of Warcraft

[you know what time it is]

Animations and combat mechanics carried wow big time, while simple - combat felt really dynamic and fun, now compare that to L2... or something more PVP centric like GW2 even, they all handle like shit compared to this dinosaur, it's hilarious.

 

[Lacrymas]

I think Everquest was a better RPG and Guild Wars 1 a better MMO than WoW. I agree fluidity of animations was a big aspect of WoW's success, but also the streamlined (for good reason) leveling mechanics compared to EQ. But it's way more "videogame-y" and planned out than EQ or GW; you have a very structured experience - you level, do segmented runs in dungeons (i.e. they are like a level in a game due to them being instanced), then go raiding or PvP. It's like following a map that has been laid out for you by the developers. That is not bad, just a bit charmless for this type of game. This is why you see people praising the non-linear questing and dungeons, and non-instanced world PvP so often and valuing them over subsequent expansions. You might be in a big world, but that world is still a chain of levels without loading screens, if that makes sense.

 

[Morgoth]

OT:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/di...arcraft-uses-directx-12-running-on-windows-7/

World of Warcraft uses DirectX 12 running on Windows 7

Jianye LuMarch 12, 20190

Blizzard added DirectX 12 support for their award-winning World of Warcraft game on Windows 10 in late 2018. This release received a warm welcome from gamers: thanks to DirectX 12 features such as multi-threading, WoW gamers experienced substantial framerate improvement. After seeing such performance wins for their gamers running DirectX 12 on Windows 10, Blizzard wanted to bring wins to their gamers who remain on Windows 7, where DirectX 12 was not available.

At Microsoft, we make every effort to respond to customer feedback, so when we received this feedback from Blizzard and other developers, we decided to act on it. Microsoft is pleased to announce that we have ported the user mode D3D12 runtime to Windows 7. This unblocks developers who want to take full advantage of the latest improvements in D3D12 while still supporting customers on older operating systems.

Today, with game patch 8.1.5 for World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, Blizzard becomes the first game developer to use DirectX 12 for Windows 7! Now, Windows 7 WoW gamers can run the game using DirectX 12 and enjoy a framerate boost, though the best DirectX 12 performance will always be on Windows 10, since Windows 10 contains a number of OS optimizations designed to make DirectX 12 run even faster.

We’d like to thank the development community for their feedback. We’re so excited that we have been able to partner with our friends in the game development community to bring the benefits of DirectX 12 to all their customers. Please keep the feedback coming!



FAQ
Any other DirectX 12 game coming to Windows 7?
We are currently working with a few other game developers to port their D3D12 games to Windows 7. Please watch out for further announcement.

How are DirectX 12 games different between Windows 10 and Windows 7?
Windows 10 has critical OS improvements which make modern low-level graphics APIs (including DirectX 12) run more efficiently. If you enjoy your favorite games running with DirectX 12 on Windows 7, you should check how those games run even better on Windows 10!

Well, that is unexpected.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Reasons to use Windows 10 fading...

 

[Makabb]

Wait what, this means someone will back engineer it now and create a dx12 install for windows 7

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Wait what, this means someone will back engineer it now and create a dx12 install for windows 7

or you could just skip all that effort and use vkd3d, a dx12 API implementation using vulkan.

 

[Makabb]

Wait what, this means someone will back engineer it now and create a dx12 install for windows 7

or you could just skip all that effort and use vkd3d, a dx12 API implementation using vulkan.

but that is for linux only isn't it? I was talking about win 7

 

[Lyric Suite]

and Guild Wars 1 a better MMO than WoW.

That's quite an achievement considering Guild Wars 1 was not an MMO.

 

[Lacrymas]

Why not?

 

[Dawkinsfan69]

isn't everything in that game instanced?

 

[Steamboat Willie]

It was like an MORPG. Everything outside of the cities was instanced.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It is Diablo with a city in place of Battle.net chat. Hardly an MMO.

 

[Beastro]

It is Diablo with a city in place of Battle.net chat. Hardly an MMO.

It really threw me after it launched that people looked on it as a MMO.

 

[Makabb]

It is Diablo with a city in place of Battle.net chat. Hardly an MMO.

It is an mmo, thousands of players play on one server, this is the definition of 'massive multiplayer online'.


Lately there have been faux 'mmos' which are room based 32vs32 (world of tanks, war thunder etc), but a game where hundreds or thousands play on same server is an MMO.

And Vanilla was an MMO, because there was no sharding, so you could meet 500 people in same area in the open world. (instanced raids is a different thing)

 

[Steamboat Willie]

It is an mmo, thousands of players play on one server, this is the definition of 'massive multiplayer online'.

Hardly. It's essentially thousands of players in a lobby with the ability to group up and do instanced game content in a 5-man group if they want to.

 

[Lacrymas]

It doesn't matter where they are, since no definition of MMO relies on an open/non-instanced world. It's enough to have a significant number of people playing on the same server at the same time in some fashion.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Bullshit. You need a persistent server where all the players can interact with each other at all times in every part of the game. Guild Wars can't do that, therefore, it is not an MMO.

You guys have just entered "Doom is an RPG because you play the role of a soldier" territory.

 

[Lacrymas]

Citations, sources or arguments needed. You also need to define "interact with".

The definition from Wikipedia -

A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG, or more commonly, MMO) is an online game with large numbers of players, typically from hundreds to thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although some games differ.

If I ask a random person whether GW looks and plays like the same genre as WoW or ...hmm, I don't know, DotA I guess (what do you think GW is?), they'll tell me it's like WoW.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Look, Wikipedia has an ambiguous sentence that leaves it up to interpretation, proof!

Pretty sure those same random people would say Kingdoms of Amalur looks like the same genre as WoW, too. People on a site dedicated to RPGs know better, though.

 

[Lacrymas]

How is it ambiguous? It's very clearly stated that yes, they do usually feature an open world, but not all of them (like GW). Try finding another source, I tried and they aren't that many. Also, I'm a person on a dedicated to RPGs forum and I seemingly don't know better and am arguing the opposite. There aren't any other people in KoA.

 

[Steamboat Willie]

Because you emphasized "although some differ" as though that catch-all sentence means any game is an MMORPG "because Wikipedia says so".

 

[Lacrymas]

Except it isn't taken out of context, I specifically included the other sentence as well, I just highlighted the important bit because I assumed we know it must include other people.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I haven't played GW 1, but the description saying that everything outside the city is instanced does lead me to conclude that it's not an MMO.

Nor is Path of Exile, for example.

Let's imagine a single player game that has a chat, and it's a single giant chat room with everyone in it. Doesn't make it an MMO, does it? It's when you've got gameplay presence with others that makes it an MMO. Mere communication mechanics aren't enough.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's not everything, none of the hubs are instanced (which are many, not just cities), be they PvE or PvP. Missions and questing areas are instanced, though.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

If all you can do is see other characters in hubs (communication mechanics), but when you go out of the city to actually play the game (gameplay) and it's suddenly small server based with random matchmaking, then it's not an MMO.